He responded with a nine-pitch eighth inning.
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But at the end of the conversation, it comes down to this: Does he want the ball or not?
“His last time he pitched, the second day he was still pretty sore”, Collins said of Syndergaard.
But Collins said Syndergaard insisted that he felt physically prepared to pitch in Game 2.
“You start to get that anxious energy, that excitement”, Arrieta said. He will be the Game 2 starter in the NLCS Sunday vs. the Cubs.
Earlier this evening, the New York Mets defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 to win the NLDS. Collins equated that to almost five innings of work.
“Throughout the game I was just trying to take little mental photographs of everything around me, just trying to soak in as much as I could”, he said.
The Mets now move onto next week’s NLCS where emotions will continue to run high while the action will be intense.
Syndergaard finished the year 9-7 with a 3.24 ERA and 166 strikeouts in 150 innings. With this alignment, both of his starts would come at Citi Field. He also is gaining a better feel for what the playoffs are like. “But that’s kind of the expectations you’re under once you get to this point”. You could nearly say he got ready four times.
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For him, a key is to relax before getting to the ballpark. Repeats his delivery. He’s pitch efficient. The thing about being a bench coach for him that I was always impressed with was, if I had a bunch of information, I would just stand there and I would read it to him, I’d talk to him about it before the game, and he would never forget anything. It’s an unusual distinction, but Denorfia, 35, has carved a nice niche in the major leagues as a fourth outfielder and pinch-hitter. Maddon recalls a time, before defensive shifts were commonplace, when he approached Collins with charts displaying the results of Ken Griffey Jr’s at-bats and asked if they could implement a shift against the Seattle Mariners star in that night’s game. Sandlock played for the Braves, Dodgers and Pirates between 1942-45, and 1953. “He’s done a great job coming off the bench and pinch-hitting”, Maddon told reporters in Chicago on September 29. Commissioner Rob Manfred sent a letter of greeting and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy a proclamation. Another righthander, Juan Legares, was in center field.
