HOUSTON — How do you avoid it? How do you keep the thought from entering your mind when Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler are sitting side-by-side at a World Series media availability?
How do you not wonder what might have been?
“I sure dreamed about it a lot,” former Mets manager Terry Collins said over the phone. “I can tell you that.”
The dream, of course, was to have Syndergaard, Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Steven Matz go round and round in the Mets’ rotation — and to win titles behind that.
“I thought they were big enough, strong enough and durable enough to do it,” said Dan Warthen, the Mets’ pitching coach from 2009-17.
But all five only pitched in rotation twice. By then, Collins and Warthen were gone, in part because the rotation that Sandy Alderson conceived never really was. From April 9-19, 2018, the Mets went Syndergaard, deGrom, Wheeler, Matz and Harvey twice in a row. The April 19 start was Harvey’s last as a Met. Injury and off-field matters had reduced Harvey from comet to flameout. He was sent to the bullpen, designated for assignment on May 5 and traded to the Reds.
Thus, the greatest rotation that never was came to an end.
“It could have been really good,” said Wheeler, who is scheduled to start for the Phillies on Saturday in Game 2 of the World Series against the Astros. “It is unfortunate that we all weren’t healthy at the same time, basically. By the time I was healthy and back in there, someone else would be gone. It could have been special, for sure. But it’s part of baseball, right? You get people hurt, you get people going downhill or whatever. But, yeah, it would have been cool what might have been.”
At the group’s apex, Wheeler was missing. He did not pitch in 2015 or 2016 following Tommy John surgery — the last times the Mets made the playoffs before this season. In 2015, with Matz joining the rotation for good in September, the Mets rolled to the pennant. Harvey, Syndergaard, deGrom and Matz started a four-game NLCS sweep of the Cubs in which the quartet allowed six runs on 15 hits in 25 innings, walking six and striking out 29.
Theo Epstein had rebuilt the Cubs on bats, while Alderson had built the Mets on arms. The Mets seemed ahead. But Harvey was a mess after the 2015 World Series, and was never the same again. Wheeler was not back yet. Matz and deGrom were hurt down the stretch in 2016. Syndergaard was the last man standing, and he started the 2016 wild-card loss to the Giants.
The Cubs went on to win the World Series that year. That was thought to be the beginning of a dynasty derived around all the young hitters. But now, Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber — one of those young Cubs hitters in 2016 — sat across the room from Syndergaard and Wheeler talking about how difficult it is to win and then keep winning.
It is not an easy sport to figure. Just consider that the bulldog ace from that Mets group is Wheeler.
Harvey made 13 minor league starts for the Orioles this year, but never made it back to the majors, in part because he was suspended by MLB for 60 games for his admission during the trial of former Angels employee Eric Kay for the overdose death of Tyler Skaggs, that he distributed prohibited drugs of abuse. Harvey’s agent, Scott Boras, told me that his client had knee surgery in September and plans to try to make it back to The Show in 2023.
Matz, after infuriating Steve Cohen by — in the Mets owner’s belief — reneging on a deal, inked a four-year, $44 million pact with St. Louis this past offseason. He landed on the injured list twice, pitched poorly and was an unused reliever as Wheeler’s Phillies swept the Cardinals.
Syndergaard signed a one-year, $21 million free-agent pact with the Angels, who traded him to the Phillies, with which he is a fourth-ish starter without the elite fastball of his youth. Philadelphia does not seem confident in using him.
Conversely, the Phillies do little with more assurance than deploying Wheeler — as important as anyone on the team if they are to upset the Astros. That is because first, Wheeler became durable. Only Aaron Nola, Gerrit Cole and Jose Berrios have thrown more innings since 2018. And after signing a five-year, $118 million pact with the Phillies, Wheeler became dominant. He leads the majors in Wins Above Replacement (Baseball Reference) the past three seasons at 15.8, well ahead of second-place Max Scherzer at 13.3.
And in his first four postseason starts, Wheeler had a 1.78 ERA. Harvey, deGrom and Matz have not started a playoff game since 2015; Syndergaard had the 2016 wild-card game and a four-inning start this year in the NLDS against Atlanta.
Now, deGrom, the last man standing in Queens from the greatest rotation that never was, faces a free-agent choice of whether to stay a Met or to leave.
And if you need a reminder how fickle all pitching evaluation and dreams are, know that when deGrom debuted on May 15, 2014 against the Yankees, it was a day after a prospect that many with the Mets internally had ranked higher had debuted. You could have believed the next great Mets rotation was going to include Rafael Montero. And at the 118th World Series press availability, there was Montero, now a valuable member of the Astros’ bullpen.
“Obviously,” Montero said through an interpreter about the initial scouting reports, “it went a different way.”
It is baseball. The best-laid plans — even for the great rotation in your mind — can go a different way.