New York Mets: “Thor” hammers Team on deGrom’s contract, Travel Plans
By Bill Felber
New York Mets starter Noah Syndergaard sounds off in support of Jacob deGrom, tears into team’s season-opening travel detours.
New York Mets starter Noah Syndergaard must be feeling pretty spry about his spring performance, which has included a 1.88 ERA, 19 strikeouts and just 10 hits allowed in 14.1 innings of work. On Sunday, he stepped out of his appointed role as the backup ace to Jacob deGrom and demonstrated his capacities in a couple of voluntary areas: general manager and traveling secretary.
The pitcher known as “Thor,” who was 13-4 in 25 starts last season and is being counted on to help pitch the Mets to the NL East title, sounded off loudly and clearly on team operations Sunday. The net effect was to raise a question whether the Mets’ spring experience has gotten them any better prepared for Thursday’s opener off the field than their 12-16 spring record suggests they are on the field.
His first target — indirectly although not by name — was new Mets GM Brody Van Wagenen, who has not yet acceded to the vocal appeals of deGrom for a multi-year contract. DeGrom, who cannot be a free agent until following the 2020 season, will make $17 million this season.
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“I just think they should quit all this fuss and pay the man already,” Syndergaard told reporters in Mets camp Sunday. He expressed surprise that ongoing negotiations between deGrom and the team have taken this long.
DeGrom has set a deadline of the start of Thursday’s season opener for negotiating a multi-year deal that would keep him in New York long-term. VanWagenen said Sunday that the sides continue to talk.
It’s not clear how much direct impact Van Wagenen is having on those talks. Prior to becoming Mets general manager, he was a player agent whose clients included deGrom. In that capacity last season he famously urged the Mets to agree to terms with deGrom on a long-term extension.
Syndergaard’s throwing in on the side of his teammate comes following a month in which both free agents Bryce Harper and Manny Machado have signed long-term deals, and when prominent pitchers Chris Sale and Justin Verlander have cut extensions with their current teams. Sale’s five-year, $145 million deal committed the Red Sox ace to Boston through 2024.
Chris Sale will turn 30 this week. He has a career 103-62 record and 2.89 ERA. DeGrom, who is also 30, has a 55-41 record and 2.67 ERA including a league-leading 1.70 ERA in 32 starts last season. DeGrom won the 2019 Cy Young Award; Sale was runner-up in 2018.
Thor didn’t limit his verbal thunderbolts to his teammate’s contract negotiations. He also tied into whatever team official was responsible for the logistics of the team’s opening week travel plans, which involves a cross-Florida bus trip followed by a flight to Syracuse before departing for the opener Thursday in Washington.
The bus trip is prompted by a scheduled exhibition game Monday with the Orioles in Sarasota. In Syracuse, they’ll conduct a team workout at the Carrier Dome designed to promote the team’s new alliance with that city’s Triple-A affiliate.
Syndergaard saw the stop-and-go travel plans as not conducive to getting the team prepared for the season. “You’d think we’d go to New York to get, as adults, our things and our affairs in order, but no,” he remarked.
He made it clear his objection wasn’t to the city of Syracuse itself but rather to the loss of a preparation day.
“We’re not even playing a game; we’re having a workout,” he noted. Syndergaard told reporters the plans seemed to him to be out of concert with emphases the team has placed during the spring on proper player preparation.
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“We’ve had sleep meetings, meetings to teach us how to properly take care of ourselves – I don’t think that’s what championship teams do,” he said, adding that other players agreed with him.
New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon justified the trip earlier this month as kicking off “our wonderful partnership with Onondaga County.”