Phillies' Cy Young candidate Aaron Nola outpitches Noah Syndergaard in Mets' loss
BY LAURA ALBANESE
PHILADELPHIA – The Mets helped build the case for a National League Cy Young Award candidate on Friday. It just happened to not be the one they wanted.
In what is quickly becoming a three-man battle among Jacob deGrom, the Nationals’ Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola, the Mets offense inadvertently cast a vote for the Phillies’ ace_ losing, 4-2,, at Citizens Bank Park and striking out 11 times in the process. Nola (14-3) has collected three of his wins against the Mets this season and his ERA against them this year is 1.44. He pitched seven innings, allowing three hits, with one walk.
Nola’s overall ERA dropped to 2.24, with 160 strikeouts. It was his fifth double-digit strikeout game of the season, and the seventh of his career – mostly thanks to a knee-buckling curve that was responsible for seven of his punchouts.
DeGrom, who pitches Saturday, still leads the majors with a 1.81 ERA, but carries his 7-7 record like a millstone around his neck. Scherzer, meanwhile, pitched six scoreless innings Friday, dropping his ERA to 2.11.
The Phillies further benefitted from Noah Syndergaard’s roughest start of the season, highlighted (or lowlighted) by five stolen bases against him and Kevin Plawecki; it was another showcase of a big problem that doesn’t seem to be going away, despite the adjustments Syndergaard has made to try to speed up his delivery.
On top of that, he struggled with his fastball location, and had a difficult time inducing those big swings and misses that have been his trademark. It ended up being an arduous effort – 115 pitches over 5 2/3 hard-fought innings – and Syndergaard (8-3) left having given up four runs and eight hits, with two walks and five strikeouts.
Barely containing a smirk as he stepped into the batter's box, Asdrubal Cabrera faced off against his former teammate in the first and won. After the first two batters got on against Syndergaard with a single and a walk, Cabrera lined a double over Jack Reinheimer’s head in left to drive in the opening run. The next batter, Nick Williams, singled to center to make it 2-0, and the third run of the inning scored on Carlos Santana’s double play.
The Mets finally got their first hit off Nola in the fourth, a single by Jeff McNeil. Three batters later, he scored on Todd Frazier’s sacrifice fly. But Austin Jackson (3-for-4), who had singled, got picked off at first during the next at-bat to quash the rally.
Roman Quinn tripled to lead off the bottom of the fourth and Syndergaard then let up a broken-bat single to Jorge Alfaro to make it 4-1.
Though Syndergaard did give up the five stolen bases, only one of those runners scored. Still, baserunners are 24-for-26 on him this season. What’s more, three of the steals came from Maikel Franco (two career steals before Friday, none this year) and Alfaro (who had two steals, the first of his 125-game career).
Syndergaard was pulled in favor of Daniel Zamora, making his major-league debut in the sixth. The lefthander from Double-A Binghamton pitched 1 1/3 innings with a walk and two strikeouts. The Mets drew to within 4-2 in the eighth, when McNeill doubled on a bloop to no-man’s land off Victor Arano and scored on Jackson’s single.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
