Twilight Of The Mets' Pitching Gods
Twilight Of The Mets' Pitching Gods
New York's much-hyped World Series rotation is a shadow of what it once was.
As someone who lived in New York in the fall of 2015 and fervently rooted for the Mets to win the World Series, the past month’s headlines have been depressing in a “life comes at you fast” kind of way:
Once upon a time, the Mets’ World Series pitching staff — and particularly their rotation — was supposed to be the sport’s next big thing. They were young (deGrom was the oldest, in just his age-27 season), threw notably hard (no rotation had a faster fastball velocity that year than New York at 94.8 mph), and — in the cases of deGrom and Syndergaard — did it all with the long-haired abandon of glam-metal guitarists.
Fast-forward eight years, and the formerly hyped rotation is nearing the end of the line. None are with the Mets anymore; Harvey was the first to depart the Big Apple, in a 2018 trade to the Cincinnati Reds, while Matz, Syndergaard and deGrom left in succession over the past three offseasons. As is obvious from the headlines I listed above, all are now either injured, struggling mightily or outright retired. The promise of October 2015 is a distant glimmer in the rearview mirror.
As a group, Harvey, Matz, Syndergaard and deGrom produced 55.5 pitching Wins Above Replacement from the 2016 season onward. The bulk of that (33.9) was created by deGrom, who went on to have some truly dominant peak seasons after hinting at his immense potential in 2014 and 2015. Syndergaard led the quartet in pitching WAR in 2016 with 5.3, but neither he, Harvey nor Matz would record so much as a 4-win season after that. Behind deGrom, the second-best future pitcher in the Mets’ organization was actually Zack Wheeler, who missed all of 2015 and 2016 (and half of 2017) but has recorded 22.9 WAR from then onward.
So maybe the big question now is whether the 2015 Mets’ World Series rotation was a huge disappointment, or if these types of parallel struggles are just what we would expect from any group of young pitchers, no matter how talented, years down the road.
Using the 2016 Mets as a baseline (because Matz barely pitched — making 6 starts — during the 2015 regular season), I also found nine other historical teams that had at least four pitchers meet each of the following criteria:
Seasonal age of 28 or younger
At least 90 innings
At least 15 starts
A FIP- under 90
For each qualifying quartet, I tracked how many WAR they collectively produced in that season plus each of the next seven. (They didn’t have to all be with the team in question.) That will give us a comparison point against which to judge the 55.5 total WAR produced by deGrom, Syndergaard, Matz and Harvey from 2016-2023.
There are some really interesting rotations in that group, from the 1943 Tigers’ and 1985 Royals’ star-laden staffs (led by Hal Newhouser and Bret Saberhagen, respectively) at the top end to the curious case of the 1999 Astros (with Mike Hampton, Chris Holt, Scott Elarton and Jose Lima) at the bottom.
Overall, the average rotation in our sample had 66.8 WAR over the 8-year period in question — so by that standard, the Mets’ young World Series rotation fell short of expectations. Are things a little bit skewed against them here? Well, the 2020 season was a 60-game sprint, making total WAR harder to accumulate, but that year was a mixed bag for this group anyway.1 And while this season isn’t over yet, deGrom is out for the year, Harvey is retired and it’s doubtful that Syndergaard or Matz adds much going forward. The main takeaway is that the Mets’ flamethrowers did OK, but could have done more — and that’s true even by the standards of young pitchers, who are always a risk to get hurt and flame out.
deGrom will be back after rehabbing his elbow yet again, since the Texas Rangers gave him a 5-year, $185 million contract last December. (Yes, the Rangers’ experiment is going to have to keep working in spite of itself.) But Harvey is done, and Syndergaard and Matz aren’t looking like they have much left in the tank at this point. Thor even told reporters recently that “I would give my hypothetical firstborn to be the old me again,” which is about as depressing a statement as I’ve ever heard an athlete say. Despite its many moments of promise over the years, that fireballing Mets rotation from the 2015 Fall Classic wasn’t quite what New York was expecting — and that meant the team’s bet on it to succeed fell short as well.
Filed under: Baseball
deGrom was incredible; Matz and Harvey sucked; Syndergaard didn’t pitch at all.