Noah Syndergaard Pitching to Pitchers

In the year 2016, pitchers continued to hit, even though they are very bad at it. This is not good for the pitchers’ own teams, but this is good for science. It stands to reason the most terrifying pitcher for another pitcher to try to hit against would be Aroldis Chapman. That doesn’t happen. Among the matchups that do actually happen, it stands to reason the most terrifying pitcher for another pitcher to try to hit against would be Noah Syndergaard. Let’s look at how that just went.

Over the course of last season, including the playoffs, Syndergaard had more than 50 matchups against opposing pitchers. As this particular split is concerned, that’s a fairly large sample size. How do you think the pitchers all did? You might be tempted to believe they all struck out. No, that’s not realistic. They didn’t even go hitless! So maybe the data won’t raise your eyebrows in the least, but don’t be mistaken — Syndergaard was dominant. (Obviously.)

Pitchers, generally speaking, are awful hitters. Awful. Just the worst. Against Syndergaard, they hit like Nick Ahmed doing an impression of a pitcher trying to hit. You can never really expect a zero-percent contact rate, but fewer than half of the pitchers’ attempted swings hit the baseball. Pitchers are typically bad at contact, but not outlandishly bad. More like Chris Carter bad. Syndergaard made them outlandishly bad. This is exactly what you’d think would happen, but I can’t help myself but go into detail.

We can take a look at Syndergaard’s pitch mixes. In here, his overall pitch mix, and his pitch mix with a pitcher in the box.

Unsurprisingly, pitchers saw more fastballs. They also saw more sliders, at the expense of changeups and curveballs. When Syndergaard was facing another pitcher, he cut his arsenal in half, but he had every reason to do so, based on the results. Pitchers attempted to swing at 34 of Syndergaard’s sliders. Of those swings, 26 of them whiffed. When Syndergaard threw sliders to pitchers, he allowed a contact rate like when Carter Capps would throw breaking balls to anyone. Whoops, I accidentally turned a Noah Syndergaard fun fact into a Carter Capps fun fact. Back to the topic at hand.

Like anyone would, Syndergaard went fastball-heavy. And yet! He wasn’t blind, and from time to time, he’d be more careful. The best-hitting pitcher is Madison Bumgarner, right? He is, at least, the pitcher with the best offensive reputation. Syndergaard threw 15 pitches to Bumgarner last year. Just four of those were fastballs. You could consider that a sign of respect. As good as Syndergaard’s fastball is, he felt like Bumgarner could probably square it up if he tried. So why tempt fate? Bumgarner saw Syndergaard’s lone changeup, and three of six curveballs.

Turning to pitch locations, this should be fairly intuitive:

Syndergaard stayed mostly glove-side, hammering the other half of the plate and beyond. Pitchers resisted the worst pitches in there, but, I already shared with you the slider-swing fun fact. Here’s the same sort of plot, only showing which swings missed and which swings didn’t:

The arm-side pitches got hit! I don’t have an explanation for that, but it might well serve as the explanation for why Syndergaard didn’t throw many arm-side pitches. These plots aren’t very interesting. Let’s fast-forward to the part where we look at individual showdowns.

The first pitcher-batter Syndergaard faced last season was Jose Fernandez. On the fifth pitch of the at-bat, Fernandez managed to reach on an infield single.

As pitchers go, Fernandez had a fairly respectable swing. And he deserved plenty of credit for shortening up and putting a heater at 100 miles per hour in play up the middle. That’s about as good as he probably could’ve expected. Just for the sake of reference, though, that single nearly never took place, because this was the previous pitch:

How often does a pitcher-batter get a check-swing ruling in his own favor? According to Ron Darling, it had never happened before in the history of the sport.

Since I’m not going to go through every single plate appearance in detail, let’s move on to July. In the second inning on July 3, Syndergaard struck out Jon Lester. Then the game got out of hand and Joe Maddon more or less stopped caring. So here’s how Syndergaard dealt with Spencer Patton:

That was the second plate appearance of Patton’s career. Here’s how Syndergaard later dealt with Joel Peralta:

That was the seventh plate appearance of Peralta’s career, and his first since 2010. Spencer Patton came in in relief, because he is a relief pitcher. Joel Peralta came in in relief, because he, too, is a relief pitcher. In one game, Noah Syndergaard faced and struck out two relief pitchers. There must be a very brief history of pitchers facing three different pitchers in the same game. The history must be briefer still of pitchers striking all those pitchers out.

Incidentally, the best part of the Peralta plate appearance wasn’t the strikeout. It was right before the strikeout.

You see that body language? Peralta was disappointed in himself. Wanted the swing back, because he thought the pitch gave him an opportunity to do some damage. Joel Peralta.

Skipping forward more to my favorite at-bat: In the middle of September, Syndergaard went up against Aaron Blair. In the second inning, Blair popped out. In the fourth inning, he did not pop out.

This is how it ultimately went down:

The runner moved up on a steal anyway, so Blair’s entire bunting attempt was pointless. The most perplexing thing took place earlier in the matchup.

Aaron Blair was bunting. He was instructed to bunt. He showed bunt on the first pitch while Syndergaard still had the ball in his hand. Blair was never going to do anything but bunt. He might as well have worn a t-shirt that said “I’m bunting.” He could have gone up to every single infielder, individually, and shaken each infielder’s hand, and leaned in, and said, “oh, by the way, when I go back there, I’m going to try to bunt.” It was a bunt. It was the world’s most obvious bunt. So why did Blair stare down for a sign for at least nine seconds?

I don’t have a whole lot else to say. Earlier in September, Syndergaard faced Anthony DeSclafani. In the third inning, DeSclafani got ahead in the count 3-and-1, and then he stupidly decided to swing. He struck out. In the fourth inning, DeSclafani got ahead in the count 2-and-0, and then he stupidly decided to swing. He struck out. Hitter-friendly counts shouldn’t mean pitchers should be more aggressive against Noah Syndergaard. It should make them thankful they might not have to try to swing at all.

Syndergaard allowed three hits to pitchers, in all. I mentioned the Fernandez infield single. Braden Shipley hit a grounder up the middle. And yet, if you looked at that earlier table closely, you saw that Syndergaard’s slugging allowed wasn’t the same as his batting average allowed. Somewhere, there was a double! It came off the bat of one of the usual suspects.

Jake Arrieta hit that ball 103 miles per hour. Syndergaard’s fastball didn’t do what he wanted. Earlier in the same game, Arrieta struck out against one heater and four sliders. When Arrieta doubled, it was on the fourth fastball he’d seen in a row. Something tells me Syndergaard won’t do that again in 2017. Arrieta might be due for the Bumgarner treatment, because every scouting report serves some kind of purpose.

I don’t know how Syndergaard will pitch against pitchers in the season ahead. I could guess.