Jacob deGrom Might Be Blazing His Way To Cooperstown

Given their blockbuster trade for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, their additions of James McCann and Taijuan Walker, and their projected first place NL East finish, the Mets already had plenty of buzz about them this spring. As if they needed more, their best player, Jacob deGrom, has provided some during the Grapefruit League season by reaching triple digits with his fastball velocity. On Tuesday against the Astros, his heater reportedly reached 100 mph 11 times on the stadium scoreboard, topping out at 101 on a pitch to Alex Bregman.

This is nothing new for the 32-year-old righty, who hit 100 in his first outing of the spring on March 6, the same day he was named the team’s Opening Day starter. Statcast wasn’t available for that outing or his March 11 one (both of which also came against the Astros in a spring where travel restrictions limit the pools of exhibition opponents). Here’s a look at deGrom’s upper-level readings from Tuesday:

By Statcast, deGrom reached 100.0 eight times and had four or five others that would round up to 100, not that any of this really counts beyond some mid-March rubbernecking. As for keeping it 100 when it counts, a Baseball Savant search shows that last year, deGrom reached triple digits (with no rounding up) 33 times, the majors’ fourth-highest total and the highest among starting pitchers. He had only done it twice before last season, both times in 2019, but has been making exceptional gains in the velo department.

DeGrom has picked up steam for four straight years, an unprecedented accomplishment in the pitch-tracking era (2008 onward) according to research by MLB.com’s Jason Bernard. He’s gone from 94.0 mph in 2016 to seasons of 95.2, 96.0, 96.9, and then 98.6 last year, during which he took over the top spot among starters after placing second behind Gerrit Cole in 2019.

Velocity isn’t everything, of course, but it shouldn’t come as a great shock that deGrom leads our Depth Charts projections in ERA (2.81) and FIP (2.85) — he’s the only starter forecast to break 3.00 in either category — and WAR (6.3), the last of those 0.8 ahead of the second-ranked Cole. That projection is based upon an average of his ZiPS and Steamer projections, and like all projections has a fair amount of built-in regression; over the past three seasons, deGrom has managed a 2.10 ERA and 2.31 FIP, with only his 2019 numbers (2.43 ERA and 2.67 FIP) within half a run of the projection. As with all of our Depth Charts projections, the two systems’ raw forecasts (5.1 WAR from ZiPS, 6.6 WAR from Steamer) are dialed up (or down) to a playing time expectation, which in this case means a full 32-start workload and 204 innings based on his track record. While he served 10-day stints on the Injured List in both 2018 and ’19, the Mets’ ace nonetheless made 32 starts in each of those seasons, plus 31 in ’17 and 12 last year. Only five pitchers have made more starts over the past four seasons: Cole, Greinke, and Rick Porcello all with 110, Patrick Corbin with 109, and Lance Lynn with 108, but nobody has thrown more innings (690.1), posted a lower ERA (2.57), or been more valuable (22.8 fWAR, 24.2 bWAR).

If deGrom lives up to his projection, he stands a reasonable chance at bringing home his third Cy Young award, which would put him in the company of just 10 other pitchers:

You’re probably already familiar with the general contours of that list, but it can be summarized thusly: Every pitcher who has won three Cy Youngs or more is in the Hall of Fame except Clemens — whose connection to performance-enhancing drugs has stalled his candidacy — and the two active pitchers, while the majority who have won “only” two are outside the Hall, a situation that’s not likely to change until five years after Verlander retires. He’s a lock, having surpassed the 200-win and 3,000-strikeout milestones (he has 226 wins and 3,013 strikeouts), and nearly reached the starting pitcher JAWS standard of 61.6 (his 60.9 is the active lead), though he’ll have to wait until his return from Tommy John surgery to finish that pursuit.

As for the active three-timers, Kershaw is almost certainly on his way to Cooperstown, having pitched himself within range of 200 wins (he has 175), 3,000 strikeouts (he has 2,526) and the JAWS standard (he has 59.7). Scherzer has 175 wins as well; he’s closer to 3,000 strikeouts (2,784) but a bit behind in JAWS (55.4). Both have huge Hall of Fame Monitor scores — 199 for Kerhsaw, 154 for Scherzer, where 100 is “a good possibility” and 130 “a virtual cinch” — that only stand to increase once they hit those round numbers.

From among the two-time winners, what separates Verlander, Gibson, Glavine, and Perry from the others is longevity; they all blew past 3,000 innings save for Velander, who’s 12 shy. Lincecum and McLain didn’t even reach 2,000 innings before fading away, and Santana barely cleared that bar, with Saberhagen (2,562.1) and Halladay (2,749.1) coming closer; the latter is the only one from that quintet to reach 200 wins, no mean feat in that small amount of time even if you don’t particularly care about the stat. He’s also the only one from that quintet who’s in the Hall.

DeGrom’s 1,169.2 innings are even fewer than any of the other two-time winners, including the still-active Kluber (1,342.2), and he’s more than a thousand innings shy of Koufax (2,324.1), who has the lowest innings total from among the three-timers. So, from a Hall standpoint, what happens if deGrom does add to the hardware?

That’s a variant of a question I get asked so often in chats, on social media, and in casual conversations it’s a wonder I haven’t written this article already, but it certainly would make things interesting for voters. Ideally, deGrom wouldn’t win and then abruptly retire to preserve the functionality of his arm, à la Koufax during a three-week span in November 1966. Instead he’d have years to flesh out his resumé, though considering that he got a late start, debuting just 35 days before his 26th birthday in 2014, his totals aren’t likely to read as obviously Hallworthy.

But let’s backtrack a bit. I’ve noted before the resemblance of deGrom’s cumulative stats through his first six seasons (2004-19, ages 26-31) to those of Kershaw (2008-13, ages 20-25):

The numbers in parentheses are the share of that WAR that comes from offense; the two pitchers are 0.2 apart in bWAR and 0.4 apart in fWAR on pitching, but deGrom, who played the infield at Stetson University (though he never put up decent numbers), has been the better hitter, though Kershaw has improved markedly after going 10-for-132 and digging himself about a one-win hole over his first three seasons.

Pitching-wise, the pair took different routes to get to those points, as you’d expect from their ages. Kershaw’s rookie season was nothing special other than ho-hum, here’s a 20-year-old lefty first-round pick who’s roughly league average and already striking out nearly a batter per frame. DeGrom, a ninth-round 2010 pick who underwent Tommy John surgery later that same year, emerged more fully formed and won NL Rookie of the Year, then was an All-Star in his second season as well as a postseason stud who sparkled in a Division Series upset of the Dodgers and a run to an NL pennant.

Leaving the offense aside for the moment but sticking with bWAR because we’re going to return to JAWS, 59 pitchers have compiled 30 or more WAR through their first six seasons. Of that group, 25 made it to the Hall of Fame, 34 have not yet. Many of the ones who did not were 19th century pitchers whose careers predated the 60-foot-6 pitching distance and who compiled ridiculous workloads in excess of 2,000 innings in that span, led by Old Hoss Radbourn’s 3057.1 innings. Weeding out the ones whose careers started before the distance change in 1893, the split is 17 Hall of Famers and 16 non-Hall of Famers, two of whom (Kershaw and deGrom) are still active.

What’s striking about that split isn’t that it’s around 50/50 in terms of the Hall of Fame, it’s that the last pitcher who jumped out to such a hot start and made it to Cooperstown is Bert Blyleven, whose career began in 1970, more than half a century ago:

This table, which is sortable, is something of a Rorschach blot. In one view, it’s a reminder of how much more difficult it has been for modern pitchers to make the Hall of Fame, a trend I’ve documented. Old Friend Mike Petriello did so as well at MLB.com more recently; using his numbers, 0.8% of the pitchers born in the 1971-80 period — two pitchers born in the past 50 years — who threw at least 500 innings in the majors have been elected, namely Halladay and Pedro Martinez. Using that same 500-inning cutoff, 2.7% born from 1961-70 and 2.5% from 1951-60 made it, compared to 3.7% from 1941-50 and 4.8% from 1931-40. The possible elections of Clemens (b. 1962) and Curt Schilling (b. 1966), not that they’re happening anytime soon, would only amplify that drop-off.

In another view that’s not entirely unrelated, the list is something of an indictment of how stressful pitching has become, particularly when heavy early-career workloads are a factor. While 11 of the 12 lowest innings totals for those first six seasons were compiled by pitchers from the post-Blyleven era, it’s not too hard to look at those names and be instantly reminded of heavy workloads at a young age, and injuries that followed. Tanana, a young lefty fireballer who averaged 259 innings from ages 20-24, with a high of 288.1 at 22, was so heavily worked that he evolved into a league-average junkballer from age 25 onward, though he did stick around to pitch past his 40th birthday. Saberhagen piled up 235.1 innings in his age-21 season and then 780 innings from ages 23-25; he went on to miss two full seasons of his career, and had three with fewer than 10 appearances and three more with fewer than 20. Stieb, who had four seasons of 240 innings or more from his age-22 through age-26 campaigns, hung up his spikes at 35 after three injury-shortened seasons, then mounted a one-season comeback five years later. Gooden’s drug use played a role in his decline, but so did throwing 748.2 innings through his age-21 season.

Webb, Oswalt, and Higuera were all older when they debuted, with the first two doing so at age 23; all three were worked heavily but none lasted long. Webb had a five-season run across which he averaged 227 innings; he won the 2006 NL Cy Young award, finished as runner-up in the voting in each of the next two seasons, and pitched one game thereafter, leaving him with a seven-season career, too short even to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot. Oswalt’s workloads by age weren’t exorbitant but he broke down early, throwing fewer innings after his age-32 season (230.1) than his age-24 season (233), and cashing out at 2,245.1, fewer innings than Koufax. Higuera, who began his professional career in the Mexican League, averaged 237 innings over his first four seasons, and totaled 125 innings over the final four of a 10-year span, one of which was a complete wash, leaving him ineligible for the ballot as well.

Anyway, that Kershaw and deGrom are at the bottom of the list innings-wise has a lot to do with the industry forces that have reshaped workloads and thankfully, both have survived this far. Given the latter’s current numbers through his age-32 season — a 70-51 record, 1,359 strikeouts, three All-Star appearances, and what’s currently a 38.1 career WAR/38.1 peak WAR/38.1 JAWS line — he’s unlikely to compile counting stats that will read as Hallworthy. Towards that end, I asked Dan Szymborski to provide a ZiPS projection for the remainder of deGrom’s career:

I’ve included deGrom’s offense in his totals to date (2.1 WAR) but did not ask Dan to provide a projection for 2021, which might be the last year he gets to bat if the universal designated hitter is part of the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, as anticipated. Note the projection, which more or less doubles his career-to-date numbers with a bit of regression thrown in, does not go full-tilt for 32 starts a year even for 2021; durability beyond the aging curve assumptions built into ZiPS would help deGrom’s cause but he still projects to finish with far fewer than 200 wins. By Dan’s estimate, he has just an 8% chance of reaching that milestone, though a more robust 37% chance of reaching 300 strikeouts.

Based on the projection above, deGrom would finish his career with 66.9 WAR, a seven-year peak score of 42.1, and a JAWS of 54.5, which is certainly in the ballpark of Hall of Famers, even BBWAA-elected ones:

Twenty of the 34 pitchers within four points of deGrom are enshrined, with Scherzer and Sabathia having good shots as well (the latter more on the strength of his 3,093 strikeouts, 251 wins, and big-game reputation than JAWS). As you can see, the top Era Committee candidates both in practice (Farrell and Tiant) and in theory (Brown and Reuschel) are in this zone, too. deGrom’s projection lands him above the halfway point between Halladay and Koufax (48.9/46.0/47.4), the latter of whom is among the 17 starters with a lower JAWS than this group.

Considering his late arrival, low innings total, and elite ERA+ (139 would be in a virtual tie for eighth among pitchers with at least 2,000 innings), our projected deGrom would have a damn solid case as a Koufax-like exception for Cooperstown, even without 200 wins or a third Cy Young award. That he’ll be considered by a voting body that already sharply broke with precedent by awarding him Cy Youngs for seasons with 10 and 11 wins suggests that he’s in better shape than his modest projected totals would lead you (and me, before I sat down to write this) to believe.

Of course, deGrom still has to actually pitch himself into that position, and getting back to the heat he was showing off this week, the links between high velocity and Tommy John surgery can’t be ignored. Notably, a paper in the April 2016 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery found that while pitch velocity itself does not appear to be a risk factor, pitch usage does, specifically, that throwing fastballs 48% of the time or more increases the risk. DeGrom was at 44.9% four-seamers last year according to Statcast, Pitch Info, and Sports Info Solutions, with nary a sinker thrown — it’s rare that the three services are so unanimous — but he topped 49% annually in each year before that if you account for the sinkers, whose velocities have been in line with his four-seamers. That deGrom’s mechanics have been clean enough to allow him this mid-career velo increase, and that he does vary his speeds instead of throwing at maximum effort all the time, might mitigate the concerns further, but we are talking about a pitcher who’s already one TJ into his career, and the stories about second-surgery pitchers generally don’t turn out so happy. Spring training is spring training, but we might wish deGrom to dial it back just a bit, because bigger milestones than 100 mph could be in store.