Noah Syndergaard [1] was one of my two favorite Mets.
I’ve written before [2] about why I loved Syndergaard, so here’s the abridged version: When he was at his (admittedly brief) peak, he had the best stuff I’d ever seen a pitcher command. The short version was “triple-digit fastball, vicious slider, evil change-up, pretty good curve” but that didn’t do the arsenal justice. Syndergaard threw the slider at 95, with ungodly break. When I was a kid, I could name every power pitcher in the game who threw 95 — but those were fastballs, some with sink or ride but mostly of the Here It Is Hit It If You Can school. A 95 MPH slider? That pitch didn’t exist when I was a kid. It was the stuff of videogames on cheat mode, or some goofball Saturday morning cartoon featuring, say, Josie and the Pussycats having to outfox robot ballplayers.
Like I said, best stuff I’d ever seen. Yes, better than Seaver. Better than Doc. Better than Saberhagen. Better than deGrom. In 2016, the question for me wasn’t if Syndergaard would do all manner of superlative things — perfect games, fanning 20 in a game, Cy Young [3] awards — but when he’d do them. He was that good, and I’d been lucky enough to see him and dream on him from the beginning. Syndergaard was a stock I’d snapped up at $1 and now figured I’d retire on, spending the rest of my days burying myself in piles of money like some beer-drinking bipedal version of Smaug, and oh my was it ever sweet to think about.
About a paragraph ago some of you started muttering that stuff isn’t everything, and that’s true of course. But Syndergaard was smart, too. Smart enough to discuss how his arm motion was akin to a trebuchet, of all things, and — more importantly — smart enough to change his pitching mix before hitters figured out the best way to counter him. That insane slider was a Dan Warthen [4] special, introduced late in 2015 after Syndergaard realized he needed to do more than torch hitters with the fastball — a realization he made as a rookie, when most guys need two or three years of scuffling for the lesson to sink in. The stuff was there from the jump, but it was imagining what Syndergaard might do after he got done fusing stuff with smarts that really made me salivate.
(Oh, and he was also smart enough to pretend to be dumb when that was what was expected, as epitomized by his half-assed semi-alibi to Tom Hallion, post-Utley and pre-ass-in-the-jackpot [5], that “I’m tryin’ to throw a fuckin’ fastball.”)
It didn’t work out, because pitchers break [6]. Syndergaard lost a good chunk of 2017 to a torn lat, looked at least something like his old self again in 2018, and then 2019 was a strange year, one in which that arsenal somehow stopped yielding the results it should have. And then came the news we’d all known we’d get eventually: Tommy John [7] surgery. Syndergaard missed 2020 and then wound up missing nearly all of 2021 too, reduced to a lousy pair of cameos in which he was pitching without his breaking stuff.
But that was OK, I told myself. The Mets were going to hand him a qualifying offer, which he seemed inclined to accept. 2022 would be different, right? The arm would be healed, for real this time, the full complement of pitches would be available again, and we’d figure out nagging details like innings limits and the possibility of a labor war if we had to. Noah would be on the mound again at Citi Field, and while I figured I’d have about a million questions about the 2022 Mets, at least that one would be answered the only way I wanted to be.
And then the Angels showed up offering more money and a fresh start, and that was that. The silver lining, I suppose, is that Syndergaard is bound for the AL West and so I’ll mostly forget that he exists. Except when I’m fuming about his being elsewhere, or mourning it.
I’m fucking 52, and I know by now that your favorite players rarely if ever stick around to lift a cap from graying temples at the end of a storybook farewell. Hell, I’d barely started being a Mets fan before M. Donald Grant sent Rusty Staub [8], my first favorite, to Detroit for having opinions. (If you’re reading this, Lucifer, give Grant another turn on the spit and tell him it’s from me.) Mike Phillips [9] was next, until he was shipped off to St. Louis. Keith Hernandez [10] wound up in Cleveland. Gregg Jefferies [11] wasn’t my favorite anymore by the time he left, but leave he did nonetheless. Edgardo Alfonzo [12] became a Giant, visited various ports of call and never quite made it back where he belonged. My favorite Mets who left as Mets? Offhand, I can’t recall any. David Wright [13], you might say, but boy did that ever come with a giant asterisk.
And now Noah. I shouldn’t be surprised, let alone hurt, and yet I’m both. And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe to still be a baseball fan in your 50s you have to still be capable of feeling stunned and stung. Maybe that’s the price for also still being capable of feeling wild ridiculous joy about a game.
I don’t know. Ask me in April, if there’s an April that matters. For now, in November, there’s another one gone. Not the first, and certainly not the last, but one that hurts.
At least my other favorite player’s still here. Any news about Michael Conforto [14] recently?