Swanson: If Dodgers can’t reboot Noah Syndergaard, who can?
LOS ANGELES — Take a look at Noah Syndergaard’s Twitter bio, and you’ll find a hopeful, naive description: “California dreaming.”
What it’s been is a California nightmare.
When the 6-foot-6 former flamethrower signed a $13 million, one-year deal with the Dodgers, he was seeking some of the ball club’s Hollywood magic. He thought he’d star in their latest feel-good comeback story.
Instead, it’s been an unseasonably cool reception, nothing but gray skies. Not even the screenwriters can rescue him; they’re on strike.
And so the right-hander with the flowing blond hair, the Dodgers’ “Thor,” like Chris Hemswroth’s character was midway through those hit Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, is stuck.
In Syndergaard’s case, his god-like physique remains, but his god-like stuff is gone. His power, his command. He’s been ineffective, and he’s down, depressed, all but pleading, like the on-screen hero, to be allowed to “do something good, do something right.”
More dramatic, even.
“I’d give my hypothetical first-born (child) to be the old me again,” he said after his latest setback on Wednesday afternoon, when in five innings he twice blew leads and allowed five runs, seven hits and two walks as the Dodgers fell, 10-6, to the last-place Washington Nationals (24-32).
It’s hard to say whether he’ll ever again resemble the guy who was among the hardest-throwing starting pitchers in the game, a hurler who used to average 98.3 miles per hour. Who in 2016 wielded a 29% strikeout rate. Who struck out 10 Nationals batters in a game in 2019, before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for all of 2020 and most of 2021.
Because now, listening to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts discuss it, there’s no telling even when Syndergaard’s next start will be, despite all of the team’s other pitching issues.
“As an organization,” Roberts said, “we’ve got to continue to figure out which guys give us the best chance to win on a particular day, as far as starters. So I don’t know right now the plan as far as Noah, when he’ll start next.”
The Dodgers (34-23) have Thursday off before beginning a three-game homestand against the New York Yankees (34-23).
Syndergaard has now allowed multiple runs in nine consecutive starts if you remove one against Milwaukee that lasted just one inning because of a cut on his index finger. His ERA after Wednesday’s game: 6.54.
None of his pitches topped 93 mph, rendering his formerly reliable changeup toothless, and only once did a batter swing and miss at one of his offerings.
“I really don’t know what to say,” Roberts said. “Certainly not for the lack of preparation or effort, it’s just right now, it’s just not working out.”
Clearly, Syndergaard has been down to try whatever, also including hypnosis and tossing in a splitter: “Threw a couple of those, just for the hell of it,” he said Wednesday, when one ended up in the dirt and the other resulted in an out. “Didn’t have much to lose.”
Not much to lose felt different when Syndergaard, just 30, joined the club. Considering his background and the Dodgers’ successful reclamation track record, like with the resurgences last season of pitchers Andrew Heaney and Tyler Anderson, it seemed like a smart bet.
“I feel like everything they touch turns to gold,” Syndergaard said before the season, when he was on the spinning straw part of Rumpelstiltskin and hadn’t yet gotten to the part about the first-born child.
The thought was that if Syndergaard put up numbers similar to last year – he started it with the Angels, for whom he had a 3.83 ERA with 64 strikeouts in 80 innings, sufficient for the Philadelphia Phillies to trade for him at the deadline to beef up their World Series roster – he’d be a serviceable back-of-the-rotation guy.
But the hope was that Dodgers pitcher coach Mark Prior could unlock Syndergaard’s version of “Thor.” Or perhaps an updated one, maybe with less heat but more wile?
Prior might be considered something of a pitcher whisperer, but it turns out he’s not a magician.
And if he can’t fix Syndergaard, can anyone?
“It really sucks,” Syndergaard said softly after Wednesday’s game, in which he was stung by back-to-back two-out home runs to Keibert Ruiz and C.J. Abrams in the second inning and then again when Washington pushed another run across with two outs in the third.
“Like right now, I just feel like I’m the only weakest link on this team.”