Dodgers Team News

Dodgers News: Max Muncy Praises Noah Syndergaard’s Stuff After Scrimmage

PHOENIX — The Los Angeles Dodgers played some real baseball on Thursday, when they held a two inning intrasquad scrimmage. Julio Urias and Noah Syndergaard took the bump for their respective teams, and both looked dominant over the two innings of work.

After the scrimmage, our very own Doug McKain caught up with Max Muncy in the clubhouse, who faced Syndergaard in the game, and was notably the only position player to get a hit on a hard grounder up the middle.

Muncy spoke very highly of Syndergaard’s stuff, which he described as “heavy.”

“He looked good,” Muncy said. “Ball felt heavy, he had good life to it. He was commanding ball well. Unfortunately (for him), I got a little shift beater on him since there is no more shift, so it was nice.”

A big talking point of spring is Syndergaard’s velocity, something he’s lost since returning from Tommy John surgery. In 2016, when Syndergaard was an All-Star, his 4-seam fastball averaged 98.7 mph. Last year, however, it averaged just 94.1 mph.

This spring, there have been reports of him already touching 96 mph, and on Thursday, Muncy said his velocity seemed pretty high.

“It looked good,” Muncy said. “I don’t know what the numbers were but it felt hard, it felt heavy. I know in the past, facing him he’s always had good velo but sometimes the ball felt a little light. It felt very heavy [on Thursday] and you know, he had good movement so I thought it was good.”

Syndergaard has been putting in the work every morning of camp, fine-tuning his mechanics and making sure his delivery is right. Expect him to only continue to improve and get his velocity higher over the next month or so before the beginning of the season.

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Noah Camras

Noah is an Editor for Dodgers Nation. He graduated from USC in 2022 with a B.A. in Journalism and minor in Sports Media Studies. He's been a Dodger fan his whole life, and his all-time favorite Dodgers are Matt Kemp and Russell Martin.

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