Purpose pitch still fires up Royals, Mets

The next-day chatter came with as much purpose as the pitch. The Mets didn’t have a problem with Noah Syndergaard’s first pitch in Game 3 that sailed high and inside, sending the Royals’ leadoff hitter sprawling.

Then or later.

“He’s not afraid of anybody,” Mets manager Terry Collins said Saturday. “Certainly it set a tone that, hey, look, we’re in this World Series, too, and we’re going to get after it.”

After the game, won by the Mets 9-3, Syndergaard did not fall back on the cliché, suggesting that the pitch got away. Wink. Nod.

He made no attempt to cloud his intent. The free-swinging Alcides Escobar had been hacking that the first pitch he’s seen throughout the postseason. In Game 1, that swing produced an inside-the-park home run. In the ALCS against the Blue Jays, Escobar hit a first-pitch single, double and triple.

Escobar wasn’t showing up an opponent, he just likes going after the first pitch. Asked about this habit, Syndergaard, on the previous day, said he had a “trick or two up his sleeve.”

The trick turned out to be a purpose pitch.

“My intent on that pitch was to make them uncomfortable,” Syndergaard said after Friday’s game. “And I feel like I did just that. I think every postseason game that Escobar has played in he’s swung at the first-pitch fast, and I didn’t think he’d want to swing at that one.”

That brought laughter from reporters in the postgame news conference.

The Royals weren’t laughing.

“I think the whole team was pretty upset,” Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas said. “The first pitch of the game goes whizzing by the leadoff man’s head. Whatever it was, that’s what happened. I don’t think I was the only one upset in the dugout. All 25 guys in the dugout were pretty fired up.”

But the Royals couldn’t strike back against Syndergaard the way they would have hoped, by knocking him from the game with their bats.

Six of the first 10 Royals got base hits, starting with Ben Zobrist’s double after Escobar struck out to open the game. But Syndergaard retired 12 straight and helped give the Mets their first victory in the World Series.

Saturday, Royals manager Ned Yost said there were different ways to prevent Escobar from swinging without throwing high and tight.

“I didn’t expect him to throw here,” Yost said. “It’s a dangerous spot to throw that ball, especially if you throw hard. Throwing underneath somebody’s chin, if it was intentional, not intentional, it’s just a bad spot. There’s a lot of different places you could throw a ball if you didn’t want to throw a first pitch-strike.

“When we start getting up around the head throwing that hard, that’s dangerous stuff, man. It is. And there’s times where it happens accidentally. But if you’re trying to do it, that’s not right. That’s not acceptable because there’s just too much that can happen. You can end a player’s career by not intentionally hitting them in the head, but you miss by 2, 3, 4 inches and there you go.”

Yost and Collins agree that the game has evolved to a point that brushing a batter off the plate isn’t as prevalent in the game as it once was.

“The game has changed so much from the way it used to be played,” Yost said. “It was an acceptable thing to be able to move guys away. We’ve kind of gotten away from that.”

Yost said Royals’ pitchers don’t give away the inside part of the plate and cited the way his team has pitched to Daniel Murphy, the Mets second baseman who entered the series with home runs in six straight playoff games. He entered Saturday’s Game 4 without a World Series homer.

“You’ve seen us at times with Murphy pitch him in,” Yost said. “But it’s never been up and in.”

Collins said baseball no longer includes the “lost art” of pitching inside.

“Very few guys do it effectively,” Collins said. “I mean, a lot of guys try to. But the one thing obvious with all the changes in the game ... guys take huge offense to it because you’ll miss time. But I still think it’s got to be a part of the game.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Purpose pitch still fires up Royals, Mets."