Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The New York Mets have dropped more than $250 million on player talent so far this offseason, and after Steve Cohen announced it over the weekend, the organization has a manager again, too. Things are coming together, folks.
Well, there are still a few things to get done. Buck Showalter has to fill out his coaching staff and this whole lockout business needs to end, too. At least we know that one of those things (Showalter building his staff) will get done in a timely fashion.
Once it does, we’ll be able to turn our focus back to what happens on the field. When that finally does happen, it’ll be impossible to not get excited about watching Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer take the bump in the same rotation. As two of baseball’s best starting pitchers in recent years, this has all the makings of being a historic one-two punch that’ll set a tremendous tone for the rest of the starting staff. There are so many ways we could slice and dice just how dominant these two could be now that they’ve joined forces. For the purposes of today, though, we’ll be focusing on one specific aspect: strikeouts.
What They’ve Done Recently
If we look at how deGrom and Scherzer have both performed in the strikeout rate category since 2015 — deGrom’s first full year in the big leagues — the results are pretty eye-popping.
Among qualified starting pitchers, just five have struck out at least 30.0% of the batters they’ve faced over this period of time:
- Max Scherzer: 33.1%
- Chris Sale: 32.9%
- Shane Bieber: 31.3%
- Jacob deGrom: 30.8%
- Tyler Glasnow: 30.4%
This immediately puts these two in an exclusive club, but it’s the consistency in their respective strikeout rates over the years that really caught my eye.
For Scherzer, the 2015 season was a pivotal one in many ways. Not only was it his first campaign as a member of the Washington Nationals, but it was also the first time he finished a season with a strikeout rate above 30.0% (30.7%, to be exact). He’s also surpassed that benchmark every year since then. Here’s his season-long strikeout rate between 2016 and 2021: 31.5%, 34.4%, 34.6%, 35.1%, 31.2%, and 34.1%.
As for deGrom, his rise to this club involved a few more ups and downs, along with a sharp increase within the last couple of seasons (although both campaigns were abbreviated for different reasons). His year-long strikeout rate progression between 2015 and 2021 is as follows: 27.3%, 23.7%, 28.9%, 32.2%, 31.7%, 38.8%, 45.1%.
What They Could Do Together
Having two hurlers like deGrom and Scherzer who can make hitters swing and miss at such a prolific rate is a wonderful weapon for any manager to have. And if it feels like this is a rare weapon for one team to have, that’s because it is. Well, at least from the standpoint of Mets history.
If the qualifying number needed is 100 innings pitched in a single season, there have been just three instances of a Mets pitcher striking out at least 30.0% of hitters: deGrom in 2018 (32.2%) and 2019 (31.7%), along with Dwight Gooden in 1984 (31.4%). It’s a shame that deGrom couldn’t get one or two more starts under his belt in 2021 because he was obviously on track to demolish his own record.
But still, just thinking about it in this way is mind-blowing. The Mets, an organization that’s been built on some great starting pitching, had just one pitcher strikeout at least 30.0% of the hitters they faced in a single season between 1962 and 2017. It’s happened twice since then and with 2022 on the horizon, it could very well be the first time in franchise history New York has two such pitchers accomplish such a feat.
Current 2022 Projections
It’s not exactly projection season just yet, but there are a few floating out there already in the baseball corner of the internet. For the sake of today’s topic, we’ll be using FanGraphs’ Steamer projections. As it currently stands, Scherzer and deGrom are projected to combine for 11.2 fWAR, with each tossing more than 150 innings (152 for deGrom, 189 for Scherzer). Everything else we see here isn’t much of a surprise considering how the last few seasons have gone for each hurler.
Scherzer is projected to produce a 3.13 ERA with a 1.02 WHIP, a 32.9% strikeout rate, and a 6.0% walk rate. DeGrom is currently projected to put together a 2.32 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 38.4% strikeout rate, and a 5.6% walk rate.
Projections are just that, and we’ve seen the Mets fall short of them quite a few times over the years, but it’s exciting to see Scherzer and deGrom already be expected to be as dominant as we’re imagining. Now we just have to sit around and wait before we can actually see them try to make some franchise history. If they both stay healthy, though, it will likely just be a matter of how many cool things and firsts they can accomplish at the top of New York’s rotation in 2022.
