To The Rescue!

It's already been a long offseason. In reality, I know it's been less than 2 months since the Mets season ended, and yes, amazingly, they were still playing Baseball on November 1st, but the past 7-8 weeks or so since the season ended has felt like 4 months. Not kidding. The World Series feels like a lifetime ago, and maybe this offseason in particular will feel much longer than most. There is, in spite of what you might read or hear and in spite of the grousing of certain fans, a lot to look forward to for the Mets in 2016.

Generally, as the offseason rolls on, I tend to flip certain things in my head over and over again that pertain to the Mets. I've talked about this before and I'm not sure if it's indicative of some underlying insanity or not, but it's just odd things that came up during the past season. But for whatever reason, the thing that's been popping up the most has been the above clip, featuring our old friend Pedro Martinez expressing his adoration for our relatively new friend, Noah Syndergaard.

I've been thinking about Syndergaard and his place in a stacked rotation, up against Harvey, deGrom, Matz, the returning Wheeler and the ageless Colon. I don't think it particularly crazy to say that Syndergaard has a good chance to be the best of the lot. We knew he was good but he sort of snuck up on us with how much he'd matured over the course of the season. But in the pressure cooker of the playoffs, when, really, everyone among the Big 4 had their moment, Syndergaard seemed to stand taller than most. Perhaps it was because he threw himself into the winner-take-all Game 5 in LA after warming up 3 times. Possibly, it was his World Series performance.

Mostly, though, it was prior to Game 2 of the NLCS, when TBS signed on for their pregame show and Pedro Martinez immediately grabbed a Norse hammer and screamed "THOOOOOOORRRRRR!"

When you're continually drawing the admiration of one of the greatest Badasses in MLB History, you're probably pretty badass yourself. Of all the things I'm looking forward to in 2016, it's to see what this guy can do with a full season and some experience.

But, just so you don't think I'm hung up on one guy here, one other thing that's been flipping around in my head a lot lately is this scene:

I know it didn't end well for Matt Harvey or any of us on that last night, but man. That sound.