Noah Syndergaard: Baseball Has Gone Soft

In an interview with GQ, Mets starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard explained why he thinks baseball has gone soft. He couldn’t be more on the money, and I’ll explain why.

Noah Syndergaard is over baseball’s ‘unwritten rules.’ https://t.co/qHtQaNu48x pic.twitter.com/rBrbQfwrJf

— theScore (@theScore) May 11, 2021

“I think baseball has gotten soft, too. I think there should be some more s*** talking. I agree with what [Trevor] Bauer recently said. He gave up two home runs to Tatis, and Tatis heckled him pretty good. I think that’s awesome,” he said.

He was then asked if he had beef with Bauer after their Twitter exchange last month:

“No, I wouldn’t really call it beef. I wouldn’t put too much effort into that.”

But here’s where it gets good. Syndergaard was asked about baseball’s “unwritten rules”:

“I think they’re pretty stupid, to be honest. Anything unwritten sounds pretty stupid. I think it’s very old school, and I think there needs to be a new school approach.”

He’s right, baseball is out of date

Some things need to be preserved to maintain the baseball “feel,” but we can’t hold on to the past with our lives either. Giving up a 500-foot shot into McCovey Cove and then getting butthurt that a hitter flips his bat and screams at you? As an adult with common sense, it sounds like a simple cause and effect:

Give up bombs = risk taunting

Don’t give up bombs = zero risk of taunting

Wow. Ground breaking material here, and no one seems to get it. Every other sport, like football, and even college basketball, lets players celebrate. If you check out Instagram (where sports go to grow amongst our young communities), you’ll see celebrations all over the place. Monster high school dunk with their fellow classmates jumping up and down like they just witnessed Prince or Michael Jackson. It’s exciting. It’s new school. It sells.

Noah Syndergaard is a pitcher, and that needs to be clear here. He’s making himself more vulnerable to be the butt of a celebration in exchange for the game’s growth. That’s what Dodgers ace Trevor Bauer did by endorsing “pimping” home runs, and now Syndergaard followed his lead.

Hopefully more pitchers come out and wash away some of these “unwritten rules” because they’re trash. They make players like Ronald Acuna Jr. less likely to show their personalities. Hitting a batter with a fastball isn’t the proper way to stop bat flips and celebrations — striking them out is.