With two weeks left in the 2020 MLB regular season, the New York Mets continue making it hard for us to envision them being a part of the playoffs in October. You know what’s not hard to envision right now, though? Jacob deGrom winning his third consecutive Cy Young Award.

Through 54 innings, the right-hander has continued looking like the pitcher we’ve loved watching every fifth day over the past few years. He’s 4-1 with a 1.67 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, 37.8% strikeout rate, 6.2% walk rate, and a 2.3 fWAR. That ERA, strikeout rate, and fWAR are good for second-best in baseball (first in the National League), while his WHIP is tied for third best (shucks).

And since he pitched Friday night against the Toronto (er, Buffalo) Blue Jays, the Mets are making sure deGrom takes the mound as many times as possible prior to the regular-season finale. One of the many things the 32-year-old has endured throughout an incredible run of dominance that began in 2018 is, well, pitching for the Mets.

How else can you explain winning just 21 games between 2018 and 2019 despite posting a 2.05 ERA? DeGrom’s last two starts have probably felt rather foreign to him, but it’s a feeling he should get a lot more often than he has.

Incredible Amount of Run Support

To put it plainly, the Mets have scored a truckload of runs for deGrom in each of his last two starts. First, they did so against the Philadelphia Phillies in a 14-1 rout on September 6th before hanging 18 more runs on the board against the Blue Jays this past Friday.

Compared to deGrom’s previous seven starts in 2020, things look a little silly:

When looking back at the rest of deGrom’s career, this type of run support is rare, and it’s been even more rare once he started collecting Cy Youngs at the end of every season.

Heading into 2020, the Mets had scored 14 runs for their ace on two different occasions (5/16/15 and 7/14/16). They scored 16 runs on two other occasions, as well (8/24/15 and 5/3/16). When looking at his award-winning performances the past couple years, New York could only muster double-digit runs once in 2018 (12 runs) and three times in 2019 (10 runs each time).

So, not only did New York set a record for runs scored in a deGrom start his last time out, it was also noteworthy because never before had they provided such an offensive onslaught in consecutive appearances. While the recent numbers will skew things a bit, the Mets have been progressively getting better with regard to supporting their ace. The average run support he’s received has gone from 3.49 in 2018 to 4.13 in 2019 to 7.25 so far in 2020.

It’s also a breath of fresh air to see them not wasting games he’s starting. After posting a team record of 14-18 in deGrom starts during both 2018 and 2019, they’re currently 7-2 on days he toes the slab. Speaking of which…

Winning Consecutive Starts

I’m definitely part of the crowd who thinks pitcher wins is a meaningless stat. It’ll probably never go away, but it really should. Even for the most steadfast supporters of such a stat, deGrom has done his best to break down those barriers the last couple years.

To this point in 2020, though, he’s at least been reaping most of the benefits of his dominant performances. He still should have more victories to his name, but four wins in nine starts is incredible considering what the last couple seasons have been like.

With so much run support over his past two turns through the rotation, deGrom obviously cruised to easy victories for both himself and the team. Which, of course, got me thinking — how often has he won consecutive starts since the beginning of 2018? Outside of what just happened, deGrom’s first two victories from this season also came in this fashion (his third and fourth starts).

Although he’s enjoyed some runs of winning consecutive starts prior to 2018, it’s been a rare occurrence for someone who’s clearly been the best pitcher in baseball.

During his first Cy Young campaign, he won consecutive starts on three different occasions:

  • March 31st and April 5th
  • August 8th, August 13th, and August 18th
  • September 21st and September 26th

Last season, it became more rare:

  • March 28th and April 3rd
  • September 20th and September 25th

DeGrom started 32 games in each of his previous Cy Young seasons, so that fact that he’s already done it twice in 2020 through just nine starts causes some eyebrows to be raised — in a good way.

It’s not as if deGrom is easily running away with the award for a third straight year — both Trevor Bauer and Yu Darvish are putting together convincing cases for consideration. But since deGrom is the reigning back-to-back champ, they’ll need to perform well enough to take the award out of his hands.

That hasn’t necessarily happened yet, and the Mets’ ace has three more opportunities to show why he deserves to be in rarified air among starting pitchers before votes start getting tallied.