On the mound for the New York Mets on this particular day will be an intimidating right-hander with an electric arm and all the talent he needs to be one of baseball's best pitchers.
No, it's not Matt Harvey's latest turn in the rotation. It's Noah Syndergaard's major league debut.
Syndergaard's arrival in the bigs was a rumor that quickly turned into a reality. Mere days after David Lennon of Newsday got the baseball world a'buzzing with a report that Syndergaard was next in line to be promoted, the Mets made it official when they put Dillon Gee on the disabled list over the weekend.
"My first call was to my mother," Syndergaard told Michael Radano of MLB.com. "She said it was an awesome Mother's Day present. We teared up a little bit and then I called my dad.
"I've been dying to do that ever since I picked up a baseball."
It sure sounds like Syndergaard—or "Thor," if you prefer—is excited about making his major league debut Tuesday night against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. In the event that you're not excited, well, you should be. There are reasons why Syndergaard is being hyped as the next big thing.
The 22-year-old right-hander was drafted No. 38 overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2010. As his page at Baseball-Reference.com can highlight, he started looming large in prospect rankings in 2012. It was at the end of that year when the Mets acquired him in the R.A. Dickey trade, and he began 2013 as an even higher-ranked prospect.
Which brings us to this season, which Syndergaard began as basically a consensus top-10 prospect in the eyes of MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America. He made good on this confidence by doing this in five starts for Triple-A Las Vegas:
Those are some dominant numbers, and so it goes for Syndergaard's minor league career. In 99 total appearances (89 starts), he racked up a 3.16 ERA with a 3.9 K/BB ratio while allowing less than a hit per inning.
Of course, this really only tells you how Syndergaard has justified the hype. Why he's actually being hyped is why you're here, and also where things get interesting.
Syndergaard is a top pitching prospect in 2015, and he's 6'6" and 240 pounds. Simply by putting those two things together, you can deduce that he must throw really, really hard.
Yeah. He does.
Bleacher Report's Mike Rosenbaum characterized the Texas native's fastball as a "plus-plus heater" that sits in the mid-to-upper 90s and flirts with triple digits. It also has late arm-side life, meaning that it has movement that takes it in on right-handed batters and away from left-handed batters.
To boot, Syndergaard's best fastball isn't available in mere spurts. ESPN.com's Keith Law says Syndergaard throws with "what seems like negative effort," allowing him to hold his velocity deep into games. Hitters aren't going to be able to sit back and try to push up his pitch count in hopes of taking hacks at a diminished fastball.
As for Syndergaard's second-best pitch, that takes us to one of the best compliments that can be given to a pitching prospect: There's actually some debate over that.
Rosenbaum is among those who puts Syndergaard's curveball ahead of his other secondaries, saying it has "plus-plus potential." Part of the pitch's appeal is that it's actually two pitches, as Baseball America explained:
He varies the shape and speed of his curveball, often generating plus depth and low-80s velocity from a high three-quarters arm slot. At other times, the deuce arrives in the mid-70s with slurvy, lateral break.
A search for footage (read: properly sanctioned footage) of Syndergaard's slower curve turned up empty, but here's video of what his curve looks like when it's coming in in the low-80s:
Clearly, you can see why Mets skipper Terry Collins referred to Syndergaard's Uncle Charlie as "a hook from hell" in a 2014 interview with Tim Rohan of the New York Times.
However, maybe Syndergaard's best secondary pitch isn't his curveball. It might be his changeup.
Syndergaard told Eno Sarris of Fox Sports last year that pitching in the dry air of Las Vegas affected the break on his curveball, so he adapted by going to his changeup more often. This was apparently worth his while, as Keith Law and Baseball Prospectus' Christopher Crawford and Bret Sayre now consider it to be his best secondary pitch.
Wrote Crawford and Sayre:
The best of [his secondaries] is his change; it's a pitch that offers excellent deception from both a velocity difference (typically in the high 70s as compared to the 94-96 mph fastball) and his ability to keep that difference without losing much arm speed.
That's what it looks like in print. To see it in moving pictures, check out the first pitch shown in his highlight reel from the 2014 Futures Game at Target Field:
In his fastball, curveball and changeup, Syndergaard is entering the big leagues with three above-average pitches. A lot of top pitching prospects arrive with one or two of those and then develop other pitches into capable offerings. As such, Syndergaard is already ahead of the curve.
And in time, his arsenal may grow to include four above-average pitches.
In addition to his three core pitches, Syndergaard also throws a slider. And though that may sound like a redundant offering in light of how he can throw his curve in the 80s, it's actually not.
“The slider is...more [of] a hard cutter," Syndergaard told David Laurila of FanGraphs in 2013, adding: "Now I just kind of grip it a certain way and cut it at the very last moment. I consider it a slider, though. The wrist action is pretty much the same, just not as drastic. It ranges from 84 to 87-88."
For now, Syndergaard's slider is a distant fourth option behind his fastball, curveball and changeup. But given how useful an 87-88 mile-per-hour cutter could be in giving hitters different looks, that could change down the line.
In the meantime, three above-average pitches is more than enough. Especially in light of something else Syndergaard has going for him: command.
The fact that Syndergaard has never walked more than 2.9 batters per nine innings in any of his minor league seasons says enough. A lot of pitching prospects—particularly the power ones—tend to walk four or even five batters per nine innings. Not Syndergaard.
And it's easy to see why. Beyond not involving much effort, his delivery doesn't involve many moving parts and is nice and balanced throughout. That's not a bad recipe for finding the strike zone consistently.
If there's a "Yeah, but," it's that Syndergaard's command within the strike zone isn't Greg Maddux-esque.
The guys at Baseball Prospectus noted as much over the winter, writing that Syndergaard's command was "more of the area variety" and that quality strikes were relatively infrequent. It's possible he made the necessary adjustments in his five minor league starts, to be sure. But if not, major league hitters should make it clear to him that the required adjustments are indeed necessary.
But there are two reasons not to worry too much about that. One is that Syndergaard's awesome stuff should allow him to have a reasonably large margin for error. The other is that he's recently shown an eagerness to learn as needed.
Tim Rohan and Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal both authored pieces that focused on Syndergaard's transformation from "thrower" to "pitcher" throughout 2014. The highlights include former Mets ace-turned-Las-Vegas-pitching-coach Frank Viola teaching him not to rely on his fastball in pressure situations and how to get by without his best stuff.
Through it all, it sounds like Syndergaard went from being cocky to being confident. One guy who got an up-close look at how the process played out is Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki, who told Adam Rubin of ESPN New York that he liked what he saw.
"I just saw a different guy on the mound," said Plawecki. "Just his aggressiveness, his demeanor this year was different than last year. It probably had to do with his mentality—just knowing he's one of the best pitchers coming up in this game. Once he realizes that, he's lights-out. I think that's what he's starting to do. That's been fun to watch."
So, now you know. Now you know why Syndergaard is worth being excited about. He's an elite pitching prospect with a wicked fastball, at least two above-average secondary pitches, much better command than your typical young hurler and an increasing know-how for pitching.
When you have things like that going for you, you can succeed anywhere. Including the major leagues.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.
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