Noah Syndergaard’s Impressive Start

In the three-game, he has pitched this season he has had stellar performances that will hopefully to more success throughout the season.

Syndergaard Stats

In his three starts, he has a 2-0 start with a 2.12 earned run average with 11 strikeouts and four walks. The more impressive things have been the teams that he has pitched to. In his first game, he pitched against Justin Verlander and the Houston Astros. He pitched five and one-third innings after being out for two years because of injury. In his 76 pitches, he struck out one batter and gave up two hits. For his first start back, it was impressive that he shut down a potent Astros offense.

In his next start, he went up against the Texas Rangers. They are not having formidable as the Astros, but they have some big bats like Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Adolis Garcia.  But in a Syndergaard of old start, he pitched two innings with four strikeouts and two earned runs.  But he had help from his offense with the Angels scoring seven runs for him. This is different from some of the Mets teams he was on when he had to have perfect outings to give their team a chance to win.

And then in his last start, he faced the Orioles where he went five and two-thirds with six strikeouts and two earned runs.  When he exited the game, he tried to convince Joe Maddon to stay in the game but being in a bases-loaded Joe Maddon decided to go to his to try and shut down the Orioles.

What"s Led to Syndergaard"s Impressive Start?

One of the things that have been impressive for Syndergaard has been the velocity of his pitches. When he came into the league in 2015 his four-seam was 97.7 mph. The highest velocity of his four-seam fastball was 99.6 four-seam. This year he has averaged 95.2 mph which is much slower but that was expected after getting major surgery.

Another drastic change in his pitch velocity has been with his slider and curveball. This year his slider and curveball are three miles per hour slower. The miles per hour difference is due to the injury. But because his fastball velocity is down the velocity on his off-speed pitches is not as affected.

Another thing that has been different since his stellar performances with the Mets has been his pitch selection. A pitch that he has thrown significantly more has been his changeup which he has pitched 24% of the time. Using this mile-per-hour difference will keep the batter off-balance when hopefully making one of the best pitchers in the majors.

Main image credit Embed from Getty Images