Miller: What Noah Syndergaard did is so rare — it deserves its own name
From Sam Miller at ESPN.com on May 2, 2019:
On Thursday afternoon, New York Mets righty Noah Syndergaard threw a 1-0 shutout of the Cincinnati Reds, the 1 coming on his own opposite-field home run. My friend Russ calls this a True Win.
A True Win requires two things: The pitcher must complete the game, i.e. he doesn’t require any other member of the pitching staff to get outs. And he must have more home runs than runs allowed, i.e. he didn’t require any other member of the lineup to contribute. Note that this is very demanding: It’s not enough to drive in more runs than he allows (because the other batters were partly responsible for those runs), or to score more runs than he allows, but to drive himself in more times than the other team scores. He can win 10-0 and homer, or 1-0 and homer, or 2-1 and homer twice. All of those are True Wins.
The world is drowning in fun facts that are more complicated than fun, but I am going to try to sell you on adopting this new thing. It’s a cool concept, but it’s getting cooler every year; it made Syndergaard’s start extremely fun, from the third inning on.
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26656510/what-noah-syndergaard-did-rare-deserves-own-name
Originally published: May 3, 2019. Last Updated: May 3, 2019.