Dodgers News: Thor 2.0 comes to the Ravine

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Dodgers finally made a little offseason news. After most of the big names have come off the board with nary a peep from Friedman and company, the team has made its biggest acquisition this winter. Starter Noah Syndergaard, lately of the Philadelphia Phillies, has inked a one-year $13-million deal to pitch for your Los Angeles Dodgers.

Syndergaard, once one of the most feared pitchers in the National League, is a bit of a reclamation project for the Dodgers. In his first five professional seasons, all with the New York Mets, Syndergaard was regularly flirting with triple digits on his fastball. He and Jacob deGrom made a formidable 1-2 punch at the top of the Mets rotation. In his best year in Queens, 2016, the guy who came to be known as “Thor” posted a 14-9 record with a 2.60 ERA. Toss in 218 strikeouts that year, and you get the idea of just how dominant his stuff was.

However, the success was not to last. A lat muscle tear put Syndergaard on the shelf most of 2017, and he spent extended stays on the injured list in ‘18 and ‘19 it all came to a screeching halt in 2020 when Tommy John surgery cost him the entire year. Syndergaard returned to the Mets for two late-season innings in ‘21 and then signed a one-year, $21 million deal with an Angels club looking for rotation help.

After putting up so-so numbers with the Halos, Syndergaard was shipped to the Phillies at the trade deadline in 2022, and pitched reasonably well for the them down the stretch. He had a 4.12 ERA over ten appearances (nine starts) with the eventual NL champs. And though the Phillies seemed to be avoiding him as best they could in the postseason, he actually had good numbers in his outings in October: 3.24 ERA over eight innings of work.

So, one more year removed from the Tommy John, the veteran right-hander comes to the Dodgers. Perhaps Mark Prior et al can work with him on his mechanics and get that velocity back up to where it had been in his prime.

To me this is like a Tyler Anderson deal. You roll the dice on him, and see if you can’t unlock something that can turn him around. We shall see.

So at the moment, the Dodgers have Urias, Kershaw, May, Gonsolin, and Syndergaard. Not a horrible rotation, but it would sure look nicer with Carlos Rodon in there somewhere.