Losing Noah Syndergaard is a Major Failure

If the Mets add a single pitcher who's not as good as Syndergaard, they'll be haunted by the fact that they could have just kept Syndergaard instead.

Folks, the Mets screwed up.

In allowing Noah Syndergaard to sign with the Angels, the Mets suffered their first major process failure of Steve Cohen’s ownership. There’s no way around it, and there’s not much of a silver lining. Letting Syndergaard walk is a bad move, plain and simple.

The Mets need starting pitching, and they need it badly. As of now, they have three (vaguely) healthy starting pitchers: Jacob deGrom, Taijuan Walker, and Carlos Carrasco. Carrasco fell apart in 2021; Walker had a 5.82 E.R.A. in the second half; deGrom missed the entire second half of the season. Their other starting options are David Peterson (missed the entire second half, and had a 5.54 E.R.A.), Tylor Megill (4.52 E.R.A.), Trevor Williams (looked solid last season, but has a 4.42 career E.R.A.). Beyond that, there’s the odd Jordan Yamamoto here and Robert Gsellman there, but now we’re getting down to emergency plans.

Obviously, coming off Tommy John surgery, Syndergaard wasn’t going to be a sure thing. But he was one of the highest-upside arms available. At his best, Syndergaard is a Cy Young contender. A bit below his best, he’s still who he was in 2018, when he pitched to a 3.03 E.R.A. Syndergaard would have been an enormous boon to the Mets’ thoroughly depleted rotation, and he was available for just money. There was no cost in players or draft picks. Sandy Alderson’s assertion that Syndergaard didn’t give the Mets a chance to counter the Angels’ offer complicates the narrative a bit, but it doesn’t exonerate the Mets: they should have been in contact with Syndergaard’s representatives the entire time. Things never should have gotten this far.

Charles Wenzelberg/NY Post

So why did they? Where will the Mets turn now for pitching? There are free agent options, including Marcus Stroman, but it will be almost impossible for the Mets to be better without Syndergaard than with him. The Mets probably need three starters to go into the season confident in their rotation. It’s miles from a sure thing, but suppose they actually go all-in and end up adding three solid starters. If any of those three starters is worse than Noah Syndergaard, they’ve failed by letting him walk. Syndergaard has a solid chance to be one of the best starters in the 2022 free agent class, and the Mets had a better chance than anyone else to take advantage — but they didn’t.

Who are they going to add? Stroman? Sure. Zack Greinke? Maybe. Kevin Gausman or Carlos Rodón? Maybe. Not Justin Verlander or Robbie Ray (qualifying offers; they’ve indicated they don’t want to give up draft picks) or Max Scherzer (rejected a trade to New York last year) or Clayton Kershaw (surely he’ll retire a Dodger or a hometown Ranger).

Say the Mets pull off an incredible offseason, and re-sign Stroman while also adding Greinke and Rodón. Will Greinke be better than Syndergaard in his age 38 season? Will Rodón keep up the 2.37 E.R.A. that he put up in 2021, or revert to his 4.14 E.R.A. from 2015 to 2020? Obviously, they both have upside, but Syndergaard does too, perhaps more than any of them.

And that’s assuming the Mets pull off an absurdly successful offseason and sign a bunch of stars. More likely, they’ll add someone like Alex Cobb or Anthony DeSclafani, a guy who can sort of pitch but isn’t impressing anyone — and certainly isn’t Noah Syndergaard. Put simply, the Mets have backed themselves into a corner: if they add a single starter this offseason who’s not as good as Noah Syndergaard (a high bar — that’s the point!), they’ll be haunted by the fact that they could have just kept Syndergaard instead.

Syndergaard was supposed to be the easy one. He was coming off an injury, so his price wasn’t too high in dollars or years, and he was already with the Mets, so he didn’t cost anything in draft picks either. The draft pick compensation that the Mets will receive from the Angels is something, but it’s far from equal to what the Mets are losing. Not many draft picks turn into Noah Syndergaard.  

Losing Syndergaard isn’t the end of the world for the Mets, but it’s a major setback. Syndergaard’s empty slot means one more starter the Mets need to acquire somewhere else, which isn’t easy. There aren’t that many free agent starters with Syndergaard’s upside, and there are 29 other teams who need pitching; there will be plenty of competition for big-name starting pitchers. The Mets could have kept Syndergaard for a few million dollars on top of a Qualifying Offer, and inserted a big arm with Cy Young potential into the middle of their rotation. That they didn’t is a bad sign for everyone involved.