For the second straight season, New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom has found himself at the forefront of the National League Cy Young race.

Upon taking home the award with a historic performance in 2018, it would’ve made sense to expect a little regression in 2019. After all, it’s hard enough to post a 1.70 ERA in the big leagues one year — it’s even harder to repeat that kind of production. There’s nothing wrong with hoping he’d be just as dominant, but it would be unfair to expect that year after year. Pitching to MLB hitters — especially when homers are more prevalent in today’s game than ever before — isn’t an easy task.

But here we are at the end of the regular season, and deGrom has done just that with many of his statistics. He’ll be taking the mound Friday against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park for one of his final starts as the right-hander tries to cement his Cy Young case once again. When comparing his 2019 campaign to what he did in 2018, though, it’s almost comical to see how similar some of the numbers are looking.

This doesn’t include his record, which is currently 9-8 on the season. As we all know, that’s eerily similar to last year’s record, which settled in at 10-9. This also confirms that the Mets still can’t show him love consistently in the form of runs scored.

Based off recent performance, we can safely assume that deGrom will surpass the 200-inning plateau for the third straight year. We can assume that because he’s tossed at least seven innings in six straight starts and in 11 of his last 13. And if it weren’t for a rough start in March/April, the right-hander’s ERA and fWAR probably would be much more similar to what he produced in 2018.

Through April 30th, deGrom owned a 4.85 ERA and 0.5 fWAR in 26 innings. Since May 1st, which has spanned 164 frames, he’s produced a 2.25 ERA and 5.7 fWAR. So after that un-deGrom-like start, he’s been exactly who many thought and expected him to be this season.

As the Mets’ ace plows full-steam ahead, he very clearly turned things up a notch after returning from the All-Star break. That’s been well documented around these parts, but it’s also a similar trajectory that he put himself on around this time last year en route to being named the best pitcher in the Senior Circuit. Here’s a look at how his second-half performances compare to one another in each of the last two years.

Once again, his production in these specific areas are nearly identical. It’s almost a little creepy, but then again, being consistent is one of deGrom’s best qualities. As similar as the last two years have been for the right-hander, though, there have been some things that have changed. I mean, everything can’t be exactly the same, ya know.

There has been a slight decrease in soft-hit rate (25.2% to 22.1%) and a slight rise in hard-hit rate (26.6% to 30.8%), but combining that with the rest of his batted-ball profile makes it easy to see why many of his statistics haven’t changed much. The one thing that has changed drastically has been his slider usage, which is something that’s also been exaggerated throughout the second half.

DeGrom’s fastball usage is on track to decrease for the fourth consecutive year and is currently sitting at 49.8%. While he’s throwing his changeup at just about the identical rate to last year (16.1% vs. 16.2%), his curveball usage has been cut from 7.9% in 2018 to his current rate of 3.1%. All of these decreases have gone toward his slider, which he’s tossing at a career-high 30.9% clip.

That percentage has him in the top-10 of qualified hurlers in baseball when it comes to the frequency in which he throws it.

The old adage is that if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it. Outside of not getting nearly as many wins as he deserves, deGrom has found his niche with regard to being consistently dominant every five days.

Doing what he’s done over the past two years and being a frontrunner for the NL Cy Young on both occasions isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary when looking at his situation. Yes, not many pitchers get to this level in consecutive seasons, but deGrom is clearly in his prime and has figured things out. What makes it even more interesting is how eerily similar his numbers have been in both campaigns.

As long as they stay at these levels, though, I could get used to it.