A Thread for Starting Pitchers That Are Jacob deGrom

Check out the gaudy W-L record on Brad, I mean Jacob.

De Grom was inspected twice by the umpires today.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/mets-degrom-first-pitcher-inspected-new-mlb-foreign-substance-rules/

SI piece posted this morning:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/06/22/jacob-degrom-season-dominant-the-opener

itt i try to criticize jacob degrom

it must help to have a manager who takes him out of the game before he gives up a run. he's only gone past 6 innings once since April. 12 starts, 72 innings for an average of 6 innings per game so far this year. don't get me wrong, that's great, of course! any team will take that, regardless of the ERA. but for comparison, Arrieta's final 12 starts in 2015 added up to 88 innings (7.1 IP/game, 0.41 ERA), and Flaherty's final 12 starts in 2016 were over 82 innings (almost 7 IP/game, 0.77 ERA).

and that's all i got. although i was also idly considering this terrible scenario:

what if degrom continues being superhuman this year and 2022, but then dr andrews visits him in the night and his arm mysteriously explodes soon afterward, and he ends up retiring after 2023 with a career line of 50+ WAR but less than 100 "wins". hall of famer? i guess Koufax is a comparison.

I think without the injury scares he definitely goes more innings.

dang, gooden's first 12 starts in 1985 covered 94 innings, and he had 16 complete games that year! seems as far away from today's game as gibson probably did to gooden's

He does have a 2.74 career ERA in the 7th inning (.244/.280/.375), so obviously they are wary.

re: deGrom.

Whether he wins a third Cy would likely figure into any HOF consideration; there are no non-PED three-time Cy or MVP winners not in the HOF.

I think I said this in the other thread, but I do think he needs the third Cy, plus to be excellent for the next three years to meet the bare minimum of the hall. A no hitter plus some good post season work would also help, as would pitching well deep into his late thirties. It’s probably too early to make any predictions until he gets to the ten-year mark in 2024.

he’s getting in imo

Choppy day, but he got out of a bases-loaded/none-out situation with only one run. Two for the day through six innings, ERA has ballooned to 0.69. (BA up to .414...)

He gave up 2ER on three hits in 6 IP ... and his ERA went up by 40%!

gonna try to watch a little tonight.

or the entire thing. whatever.

Well I guess I jinxed that.

his ERA is now 1.03 as of the end of the first!

*drudge sirens*

how's his rpms looking

small sample so far, but up from his season average, and higher velo as well

https://i.imgur.com/zTU9orR.png

ah so he's just regular bad now

it was a good career

he could have been a hall of famer

comeback player of the year

The thing I love about deGrom is how even when he doesn't have his best stuff he figures things out. So many games where he gives up 1-2 runs in the 1st or 2nd inning on 20+ pitches, then he starts bearing down and you look up and its the 6th and he's thrown 85 pitches and no one else even got on.

― Vin Jawn (PBKR), Wednesday, June 2, 2021 8:51 PM (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

he could have been a hall of famer

Meant as a joke, I know, but--and I do realize how insane this sounds--it really does feel like his HOF status is a precarious house of cards where one awful start could matter. I wrote about that last week:

http://phildellio.tripod.com/

Short version: an awful start would deny him any chance at the the record, which--in tandem with falling short of the qualifying IP--could cost him a third Cy, which then, down the road, could leave his HOF status on the fence.

His career is just so strange in terms of historical precedent.

I think his HOF chances are pretty safe. He can be mediocre for the next 4 years and I think he’d still be a shoe in. But it’s not like he’s in any sort of decline right now.

i think to get in he'll have to have either keep up for a few more years (better than mediocre, not necessarily world-beating) and/or have some sort of Legendary Moment near the end

if puts up a 4.08 ERA from 2022-25, in other words, the mystique will be gone. people forget quickly

To me it comes down to two things: Cys and how much the value of wins has been discounted (or will have been discounted by the time he's eligible) compared to, say, 20 years ago--50%? 70% completely? One good thing is that his lack of run support has probably been scrutinized and publicized more than any pitcher ever. Don't think I'd go so far as "pretty safe," not yet.

https://i.imgur.com/Chdcl9L.png👍

deGrom is pretty good but he's no Dutch Leonard

looking at Sanata as a possible comp for falling short of the hall – I guess clemenza might have a point.
both won two Cy youngs, 4 all star appearances (assuming Degrom this year). Sanata had a few more years in before losing 2011 to injury and only getting just one so-so year in after that; so his counting stats look a better (139 vs 77 wins, 1988 vs 1485 strikeouts 51 WAR vs 41). But Degrom has a significant edge in ERA (2.50 vs 3.20), ERA+ (157 vs 136), FIP (2.63 vs 3.44), SO/W ( 5.07 vs 3.51)the list goes on.
so i guess if he gets the Cy this year, it could cement him as a HoF no matter what happens after... more Koufax than Sanata at that point. but it's not like a sudden end to his career is eminent or anything.
i'm also now curious what the most dominant season a non-HOF starter has had (not counting pre-deadball).

a few quick results i got were Clemens in 97 (tho obvious a hall of fame calibre pitcher but not in for other reasons, currently) plus Wilbur Woods AND Vida Blue in '71

johan santana, right?

I wasn't watching much baseball during his prime years, so i had to look it up to make sure myself

definitely not Ervin!

Not sure how they did in WAR without checking, but McLain and Tiant in '68, Dean Chance in '64, Gooden in '85, and Guidry in '78 all come to mind.

Lolich was pretty great in '71 too.

Jacob DeGrom, former Hall of Fame contender, current fading superstar with 2 ER today and a 1.08 ERA

How the mighty have fallen.

To slightly less mighty, but still pretty mighty.

Second fewest starts (198) after Darvish (197) to 1,500 strikeouts.

https://i.imgur.com/EDLi8QP.png

no idea why they chose those for comparison, but it's been the exact same layout for over a month now. it's true that MLB just doesn't generally understand what their own fans like to see

Do you mean the ERA chart or the Darvish comparison? The latter seems meaningless to me, especially when they call it "fastest to 1500 strikeouts," but Leonard (official record, Negro League mark aside), Gibson (modern-day record), and Gooden (best since 1968) make sense, no?

to me, the ERA comparison is useless for the same reason of "fastest to 1500 strikeouts" - they were all playing in different eras

but also, just from a PR/stats perspective, i'd guess only a small portion of the fans would intuitively understand why the players in the chart above were chosen (to represent different eras and run-scoring environment). and even then...to keep the same little stat template up for like 6 weeks when it only takes 20 minutes to come up with something different and interesting? eh, what do i know. the pandemic has been hard for everyone, including mlb.com data visualizers

To clarify, I thought the "fastest to 1500" was useless because they used starts rather than age (or, at the very least, IP). Darvish and deGrom are the same era, though.

They could use some parenthetical explanations on the ERA chart, for sure.

I think the record he's actually vying for is an the unofficial, esoteric Greatest Injury-Riddled Season Ever record.

https://www.mlb.com/news/jacob-degrom-right-forearm-tightness

On the shelf two more weeks.

Making his first major league start in 13 months tonight. With some first inning adrenaline, his fastball hit 102 MPH. Doesn’t look like he is overthrowing so far.

Looks like he pitched very well tonight.

Either finished for the day or one more inning, but what a game: 5 perfect innings, 10 K.

Retired the first 17! Then Swanson hit a homrerun :/

I caught his last two batters--didn't realize the Jays network had switched over to the Mets game. He came real close to 6 perfect innings with 13 strikeouts.