The New York Mets have just begun to officially descend upon Port St. Lucie for Spring Training, and some players are wasting no time in making some bold statements.

One of those guys is staff ace, Jacob deGrom. While chatting with the media on Wednesday, he mentioned that the number-one priority is to help get the Mets back to the World Series. If New York is going to have any kind of shot, they’ll need deGrom to continue being his dominant self.

How could we measure that, exactly? Well, if the right-hander puts together another season worthy of Cy Young consideration, that’d be a good barometer. Netting the honors for a third straight year is a stated personal goal of his, and based on what he’s done in 2018 and 2019, he has to be an early favorite.

We’re not here to nit-pick deGrom’s overall performance from the last couple years to figure out what he could do better. It’s hard to criticize a hurler who has led all qualified pitchers in fWAR (16.0) and ERA (2.05) by a considerable margin in the second-highest number of innings accumulated from 2018-19 (421 frames).

This is merely an exercise to point out certain areas where the 31-year-old will need to continue excelling to try and become just the third pitcher to win three consecutive Cy Young Awards and the first since Randy Johnson took home four straight for the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1999 to 2002.

Take Charge of At-Bats

As a freshman on the high school baseball team, I remember my coach quizzing us by asking, “What’s the best pitch in baseball?”

I thought I had it right by saying a well-placed fastball, but that was wrong, according to him. The answer was simply “strike one”. Of course, getting that first-pitch strike becomes a little less important when the pitcher on the mound can’t keep that momentum going.

Starting ahead in the count has never been much of a problem for deGrom as a big leaguer. His career first-pitch strike rate entering 2020 is a healthy 65.0%, and it’s been a tad higher over the past two seasons (65.3%). What has improved is his ability to keep the momentum in his favor throughout any given at-bat.

Between 2014 and 2017, deGrom posted a walk rate below 5.0% with a sub-1.00 WHIP just once (5.1% walk rate and 0.98 WHIP in 2015). Unsurprisingly, he’s accomplished both of those feats in each of the last two years, posting a combined 5.5% walk rate with a 0.94 WHIP.

Keeping runners off the basepaths will obviously make it easier for the right-hander to continue making more of an impact each time he takes the mound by getting deeper into games.

Tough With Runners on Base

But when runners do get on base, he’s shown an uncanny ability to either completely prevent damage from happening or limit what would’ve been a huge inning in other scenarios. This is something deGrom has been good at for the majority of his big-league career (Game 5 of the NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers immediately comes to mind). However, it’s reached another level during his Cy Young performances.

His combined 81.9% strand rate during this period of time ranks second in the majors to only Justin Verlander (86.7%), and on a single-season basis, he’s enjoyed his two best years in this category (82.0% in ’18, 81.8% in ’19).

Something that stood out like a sore thumb during deGrom’s incredible 2018 campaign was how the opposition’s chances of scoring increasingly got lower as runners reached scoring position. Opponent wOBA went from .236 with the bases empty to .219 with runners on base to .171 with runners in scoring position. With runners on second and/or third in 2018, hitters slashed just .142/.195/.209 against deGrom.

That’s insane, and while it wasn’t as drastic last year, the same pattern revealed itself when looking at opponent wOBA: .252 with the bases empty, .245 with runners on base, and .244 with runners in scoring position.

If a hurler wants to have an incredibly low ERA like deGrom, the recipe for success is pretty simple: don’t allow many dudes on base, and for the ones who do reach, make sure they don’t score. It’s just a little easier said than done, but deGrom has turned it into an art form during his stretch of dominance.

Cranking Up the Slider and Changeup Usage

From 2015 through 2019, there have been a couple of constants with deGrom’s pitch mix: declining usage rates of his fastball and curveball, along with a sharp increase in slider usage. This past year, he finished with a career-low 49.5% fastball usage and a 3.0% curveball usage, while he tossed his slider at a 31.5% clip (nearly a nine-percentage-point rise from 2018).

Despite sporting a fastball velocity in the mid- to upper-90s, his slider is a pretty devastating pitch. Since the start of 2018, his 1.99 value on a per-100-pitch basis (via FanGraphs) is the fourth-highest in baseball. Opposing hitters have mustered just a 36 and 39 wRC+ against that offering in the last two years, respectively.

But you know what’s been more effective during that same time? Yes, his changeup. On a per-100-pitch basis, deGrom’s 2.30 changeup value is the best in baseball. That coincides with the shift in pitch mix, too. After seeing his usage of this offering hover around 12.0% for the first few years of his career, it spiked up to 16.1% and 16.0% in 2018 and 2019, which yielded a wRC+ of 10 and 29 from opposing hitters, respectively.

So while the high-velocity fastball is a terrific weapon, it’s only as fearsome as it is when paired with elite secondary pitches, like his slider and changeup.

Can deGrom take home a third straight Cy Young in 2020? That’s certainly a tough task, but so was coming back from a historic 2018 and basically doing it all over again — especially after struggling through March/April. Nobody should be counting him out now, and that likely won’t happen until we see such a thing with our own eyes.