Noah Syndergaard was perfect through five innings before he gave up just two hits to the Indians on Thursday night, but he didn’t credit his sinking fastball or hard-to-read slider.
Syndergaard pointed to catcher Wilson Ramos as the root of his successful outing.
“I think the reason I had such success for those six innings is just the trust that I had with Wilson behind the dish,” Syndergaard said after the Mets completed a sweep of the Indians with a 2-0 victory over the Indians that was called because of rain after the eighth inning. “That really allowed me to maintain my focus, because all I had to do was focus on my execution of the pitch.”
The 32-year-old Ramos has been behind the plate for two of Syndergaard’s last three starts and seems to have found a groove with the righty. Before Ramos started behind the plate against the Nationals earlier this month, Tomas Nido had caught Syndergaard’s seven previous outings.
Before the game was called, Ramos went 1-for-3 to extend his hitting streak to 16 games and his fourth-inning double drove in Joe Panik and Michael Conforto for the game’s only runs.
Ramos has appeared in 18 of 20 games this month, during which the two-time All-Star has registered a hit in all but one game.
Panik singled before Conforto stroked a ground-rule double to put runners on second and third for Ramos in the fourth. The Venezuela native then swatted a double to the right-field corner to put the Mets on the board.
“[He’s played a] huge role, he’s catching all of the time,” manager Mickey Callaway said. “He’ll probably have [Friday] off because he’s caught three in a row now, but he’s our main catcher. We got him for this reason. We knew that he was going to go out there and hit and drive in runs and the main reason his streak is staying alive is his willingness to go the other way.
“That one hit that he gets with runners in scoring position seems to always be back up the middle or the other way and that’s going to score a lot of runs.”



