Considering all the things New York Mets fans can feel good about following the 2019 season, watching starting pitcher Jacob deGrom put together a second straight Cy Young worthy campaign is towards the top of the list. If the right-hander does take home those honors again, that alone will put him in an exclusive and historic club, but how exactly does his performance rank when looking at the best single-season efforts in franchise history?
As one can imagine, it looks rather favorable.
In an effort to view the production from hurlers in different eras, let’s use fWAR as the barometer. There have only been nine individual seasons where a Mets pitcher has accrued at least 7.0 fWAR. DeGrom’s 9.0-fWAR performance from 2018 already put him on this exclusive list, but piling up another 7.0 fWAR the following year allows him to join Tom Seaver and Dwight Gooden as the only ones to do so more than once.
Here’s a quick look at the year, the name of the hurler, and the fWAR they produced to get onto this list:
Who else has come close to breaking into this club recently? If we’re talking about this decade, that’d be Matt Harvey (6.9 fWAR in 2013) and Noah Syndergaard (6.0 fWAR in 2016). If we’re talking about this century thus far, Pedro Martinez (6.1 in 2005) and Johan Santana (5.2 in 2008) are also added to the list, but that’s it. Neither Seaver nor Gooden won back-to-back Cy Young Awards, so that’d be one obvious way deGrom can distinguish himself from others who show up multiple times above.
However, the one aspect of the right-hander’s past two seasons that sticks out like a sore thumb is the lack of wins. Matlack found his way onto this list despite posting a 13-15 record, but when looking at the other instances, Seaver and Gooden never posted fewer than 17 victories, which included three seasons of at least 20 wins. DeGrom’s personal record is barely over .500 thanks to the lack of run support he’s gotten during this period of time.
With that in mind, deGrom had to find other ways to excel in order to rack up such high fWAR totals, which clearly hasn’t been too difficult. In Mets history, qualified starting pitchers have produced just three seasons with a strikeout rate above 30.0%. DeGrom not only owns two of them, but he owns the top two (32.2% in ’18, 31.7% in ’19). He also posted identical 5.5% walk rates in each year, which weren’t close to being franchise records, but he’s set another one when it’s paired with those high strikeout rates.
The 31-year-old has produced a strikeout-to-walk rate above 26.0% in consecutive years (26.7% in ’18 and 26.2% in ’19), both of which are the highest in franchise history. The next closest in this particular category is Syndergaard, who posted a K-BB% of 23.5% in 2016.
In terms of pure dominance over an extended period of continuous time, deGrom should already be considered the Mets’ best starting pitcher since Gooden. When anyone talks about some of the franchise’s best pitchers, his name should be mentioned in the same breath as Doc and The Franchise. And sure, he’s on the other side of 30 years old now, but it sure seems as if the right-hander is right in the middle of his prime.
The key moving forward is for the Mets to actually take advantage of this historic production before it’s too late. Among the nine greatest starting-pitcher performances in franchise history, only one of them occurred during a year in which New York reached the playoffs (1973). While having a successful bullpen is crucial for any playoff-bound club, the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are showing how impactful a top-notch starting rotation can be in October.
The Mets’ top three of deGrom, Syndergaard, and Zack Wheeler could’ve at least had them in the same ballpark (pun intended) with those two clubs if each hurler was firing on all cylinders. Marcus Stroman could take Wheeler’s place if he signs elsewhere as a free agent this winter. However, it’d be great to have a front four that could match up with any opponent, whether that includes Wheeler or another external addition.
Brodie Van Wagenen already feels as if the Mets’ competitive window is wide open, so he might as well do all he can while one of the franchise best all-time pitchers is leading the way in his prime, right? It’ll now just be a matter of if he does, and if ownership allows him to do so.
