It’s not a trade in the sense that the Mets and Angels got together and exchanged personnel that they had any contractual right to exchange. Billy Eppler hasn’t worked for the Angels for a while. Noah Syndergaard [1] entered free agency. That the former Angels GM is reportedly heading east to take the same job with the Mets and the former Mets ace (or co-ace) is reportedly heading west to assume a starting pitcher role with the Angels nonetheless makes it feel a bit like a swap.
Among other things.
It would be pretty cold to dismiss the impending departure of Noah Syndergaard — our Thor — as transactional trivia. Thor is leaving us [2]. Leaving us cold. Maybe cold deserves cold. But leaving is his right. There’s a Basic Agreement in place for at least a couple of more weeks and, as a free agent, Noah did not have to take the lucrative one-year qualifying offer the Mets made him, not if he thought he could get a better deal elsewhere. The Angels gave him a better deal. More money, at any rate: $18.4 million in 2022 if he took the QO versus $21 million in 2022 from the Angels, pending the physical Thor presumably passes after spending two seasons rehabbing from Tommy John and two major league innings showing he can still throw fastballs.
The Mets at the moment are neither a sinking ship nor a rising tide. I don’t know what they are. They haven’t been a very good baseball team these past two seasons nor four of these past five. Noah Syndergaard hasn’t participated in the bulk of the past two seasons and missed most of 2017 plus a swath of 2018. The Mets’ only winning record in that span came when Syndergaard was able to make his full complement of starts, in 2019 (when his ERA rose uncharacteristically above 4). One can infer a connection between the Mets’ quality and Syndergaard’s presence. One has no idea what the Syndergaard of 2022 will deliver to his team, except that he’ll be delivering it in red and white in Los Angeles of Anaheim.
Thor embraced being a Met, which I appreciated. Thor was a Met worth embracing, especially upon his arrival in 2015 and amid his ascension in 2016. One starting pitcher has won a World Series game as a Met since Ron Darling won Game Four in 1986. That would be Noah Syndergaard, Game Three, 2015. Given the paucity of big games won by big-game pitchers on the biggest stage of all, that’s one powerfully punched ticket. After Thor did his “meet me sixty feet, six inches” walking the walk and talking the talk in precisely that order in the face of Alcides Escobar and the rest of the Kansas City Royals, he was golden. After his pitching arm was the only one among the five budding aces to persevere through the league championship defense campaign of 2016 — he made the All-Star team, nearly won the Wild Card Game and simultaneously blew our minds [3] like he blew batters away — he established himself as one of our icons for the ages. After that, everything else in the Thor saga was details.
Unfortunately, baseball seasons are comprised of countless details, including who’s gonna take the ball every fifth day and what’s gonna happen when he does and doesn’t. Thor since 2017 has been a charmer always, a pitcher sometimes. It’s a symptom of being human and throwing at three-digit speeds. He belongs to the Angels now. You don’t love to see him go. You understand these relationships don’t usually last forever. Maybe I’m just numb to this sort of dissolution. I figured I’d be rationalizing Michael Conforto’s farewell before I’d be processing Noah Syndergaard’s. I’ll probably be doing both, if not precisely in that order.
The Angel we get in return in this veritable trade is Billy Eppler, former general manager in Orange County. The Mets were either turned down by or overlooked countless candidates to run their show. Or partially run their show. Or run their show until they can bring in somebody somewhat more senior to run their show above an interim showrunner. The offseason is the time to dwell on these dramas, yet I couldn’t get obsessed by the allegedly endless (now ended) front office talent search. Tell me when somebody takes the job, I asked [4].
Somebody’s taken the job. It’s Eppler [5]. He has experience. He didn’t get it building a champion or even a contender. The Angels of Trout and Ohtani and whoever else he signed or retained didn’t win. Their status is mostly spoken of in the realm of what a shame it is that Mike Trout never gets to the World Series. Even Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets got to a World Series.
But Eppler’s been a GM, and that’s something. The last two fellas entrusted by the Mets with some approximation of that title were new to the helm and it didn’t work out for different reasons. Let’s hope Eppler and whoever he answers to have learned plenty and are ready to apply it proactively.
We need pitching. We need a winner. Let’s start by winning this veritable trade.