The Stupefying Brilliance of Jacob DeGrom

It is no secret to baseball fans that over the last five seasons or so, the greatest pitcher of this entire superb generation of moundsmen has been Mets ace Jacob DeGrom. He has won multiple Cy Young awards and is now a perennial All-Star. Every year since 2018 has seen him post a sub 1.00 WHIP and a K/9 well in excess of 10. Only twice has he failed to record 200+ strikeouts in a full 162 game season. The three word moniker that every ballplayer aspires to is now being thrown around to describe the righthander. (Hint: it has something to do with Cooperstown, New York) None of these accolades and accomplishments however could prepare fans for what DeGrom had in store for this 2021 season. Yes, he is “only” 6-2 but a deeper dive into the numbers tell the story of a historic run of dominance, the kind one would only see in a video game if you created a player and set all his attributes to the maximum.

Let us begin with the most commonly quoted stats. What else is there to say about a 0.54 ERA other than “wow”? Yes it’s only 67 innings but this has been seen precisely never. The 0.507 WHIP paints an even more impressive picture. It is a new standard of stinginess that has seen him issue a mere 26 hits and 8 walks. His K/9 is a ridiculous 14.9 which may be done before by elite relievers but is just about unheard of from starters. Furthermore, only on pitches right down the middle of the plate are hitters even hitting .200 (.227) against him. His OPS against is a laughable .357. He is making big leaguers look like bush leaguers with astonishing regularity.

If we look at advanced stats, the picture becomes still bleaker for hitters and still more masterful for the subject of this piece. ERA+ is a stat that seeks to normalize pitchers’ ERAs so as to make it independent of factors such as ballpark. It takes the league average ERA and divides by your own, finally multiplying this ratio by 100 to come up with the final number. Naturally, the league average ERA+ is 100. An ERA+ of 150 can be said to be quite outstanding. DeGrom’s? 723! Naturally, it would be unlikely that he maintains this all year but he looks well poised to beat his brilliant 218 clip from 2018. His Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is 0.80 (not a typo) which is several standard deviations below the league average of 4.14 at this moment in the season. Basically, he is far and away the best at preventing homers and walks whilst simultaneously being the best at racking up strikeouts. Unfortunately, the fact that he has missed some starts means he is unlikely to equal his 9.9 WAR of 2018 or 8.0 WAR of 2019 but his other numbers suggest he has been far better this year.

To close out this deep dive into DeGrom’s 2021 season so far, one would be obliged to compare it to the other great seasons of history. Of course these are full seasons and from different eras so they are far from perfect comparisons. Still, they are useful for appreciating the historical importance of what we are seeing in Queens this year. For reference I have picked the following:

Clayton Kershaw (2014): 1.77 ERA, 0.857 WHIP, 197 ERA+, 1.81 FIP, 7.7 WAR

Bob Gibson (1968): 1.12 ERA, 0.853 WHIP, 258 ERA+, 1.77 FIP, 11.2 WAR

Sandy Koufax (1966):1.73 ERA, 0.985 WHIP, 190 ERA+, 2.09 FIP, 10.3 WAR

As you can see, should DeGrom more or less keep up his brilliant performance or regress only somewhat, his numbers for the most part would compare favorably with most of the above numbers from some of baseball’s most brilliant pitching seasons. Already, Jacob DeGrom is a superstar and a likely resident of Cooperstown one day, but one day he may also be the owner of the greatest pitching season of them all. The next few months will be interesting. Enjoy them, because I highly doubt we will see this again anytime soon.