According to the FantasyPros consensus rankings, Noah Syndergaard is currently ranked as SP7. He’s listed as high as five and as low as 14.
This time last spring Syndergaard was being drafted as aggressively as SP2, behind only Clayton Kershaw. I generally like drafting players who a year ago were going earlier than they are now, and underperformed for one reason or another. It’s my way of buying low.
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Of course, Thor didn’t really have a bad year last season. He was just hurt. He began 2017 as his usual dominant self, posting a 1.73 ERA and a 30/0 K/BB ratio (!!!) through four starts. Then on April 30th, a few days after famously refusing an MRI, Syndergaard got lit up by the Nationals and eventually injured himself further. The Mets would go on to lose 23-5. Thor pitched just three more innings last year, all coming in the final two weeks of the season.
It’s fair to be skeptical of a Mets pitcher who was injured last year. It’s also fair to wonder if early on Syndergaard won’t be pitching deep into games in order to build back up his arm strength. Even if he’s healthy, the 25-year-old probably needs to adjust his approach. When he got hurt last year in that game against Washington he kept trying to throw harder and harder. That’s not the answer. Syndergaard has already said he doesn’t want to be a max effort guy anymore, which is something we can point to as a reason to be optimistic about 2018.
Furthermore the reason to “buy low” on Syndergaard is because he has been nothing short of dominant when healthy throughout his big league career. In 2016 he threw 183 2/3 innings, struck out 218, and posted a 2.60 ERA. He led the league in both FIP (2.29) and HR/9 (0.5). For his career Thor has a 2.89 ERA and averages 10.3 K/9.
This March there’s no reason to take Syndergaard over the big four of Kershaw, Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, and Corey Kluber. However, of all the starters in the next tier, Syndergaard has the best chance of jumping into that elite group. That’s the type of opportunity I look for in fantasy drafts. Syndergaard was in that top tier just a season ago. He only ever fell out because of injury. He’s healthy now, and therefore there’s a discount being built into his draft day cost.
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Brendan Tuma is a correspondent at FantasyPros. To read more from Brendan, check out his archive and follow him @toomuchtuma.