The New York Mets already had one of the game’s most celebrated starting rotations, and now their pitchers are outdoing each other in an entirely unexpected manner.

With their bats, not their arms.

Last weekend, Bartolo Colon hit the first homer of his career at age 42 in San Diego. It was a moment that seemed hard to top, but Noah Syndergaard did his best when he went deep twice in Los Angeles against the Dodgers on Wednesday night. This wacky stretch of unlikely slugging is a reminder that as overmatched as pitchers are at the plate, they are capable of making solid contact on occasion.

“We definitely take pride in it,” San Diego right-hander Colin Rea said. “We compete against each other as a staff. We spend more time on it when we are at home just because we have more time and we can take BP on the field. Usually on the road we don’t do too much.”

National League pitchers combined for 23 homers last year, with Madison Bumgarner of San Francisco setting the pace with five. Bumgarner actually posted a .743 OPS last season in 77 at-bats, an unusually respectable mark for a pitcher.

“We’ve seen it with Bumgarner, where they win their own game,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “It’s pretty cool to see, like the old Little League days, when the star guy was pitching and did all the hitting.”

Bumgarner is 2 for 20 to start this season, but one of his hits was a homer. Jake Arrieta and Adam Wainwright have also gone deep in 2016.

So has Kenta Maeda, the Los Angeles right-hander who gave up the two homers by Syndergaard.

There’s been plenty of speculation recently that the designated hitter could eventually come to the National League, standardizing that rule across all of baseball and eliminating the spectacle of pitchers trying to hit. But Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he’s OK with the status quo.

In fact, last year Manfred joked that the DH could deprive baseball fans of the chance to watch Colon hit, which he called “a great source of entertainment.” Little did anyone realize that the portly right-hander would provide one of 2016’s most endearing moments by hitting a home run.