When Noah Syndergaard went down with a torn lat last April, he took more than just the Mets season down with him. He also scuttled what was to be one of the most interesting experiments in baseball.
We didn’t get to see it, but Syndergaard and the Mets were remaking one of the league’s most dominant pitchers in real time, under the hypothesis that a more diverse pitch mix would make him even better. Syndergaard spent the first two seasons of his career as nearly unhittable, totaling a 2.89 ERA, 2.72 FIP, 1.10 WHIP and 28.5% strikeout rate in 333 2/3 innings.