On Sunday afternoon, the Mets announced the starting pitchers for their next four Grapefruit League games, starting with Monday’s road tilt against Houston. Noah Syndergaard will take the mound for his spring training debut in that game, and he’ll be followed by three other Mets starting pitchers who will also be appearing for the first time in 2018 game action.
Steven Matz will be on tap when the Astros make a trip to Port St. Lucie on Tuesday, while Matt Harvey will start against Atlanta when the Mets head to Disney World on Wednesday. On Thursday, Jason Vargas will take the field in a New York uniform for the first time since 2007 when he pitches against Miami at First Data Field.
The big name missing from that slate is Jacob deGrom, and that’s because he still has some warm-up work to do after missing time due to the birth of his second child. Hopefully he’ll be ready to go before we get too far into March.
Pitching behind Syndergaard on Monday will be some combination of Tyler Bashlor, Gerson Bautista, Jamie Callahan, Jacob Rhame, Hansel Robles, and Drew Smith.
Although two of New York’s next four games are on the road, fans will be able to three of them on local television. That’s because Monday’s road game is on MLB Network. The two home games will be on SNY as usual. 710 WOR will have radio coverage of the Monday and Thursday games, but Wednesday’s trip to Disney World will be on Atlanta radio only.