What does deGrom's next chapter hold?
He's the toughest pitcher to reach base against, EVER. Now he's healthy again
Mike Petriello
@mike_petrielloBefore the 2023 season, the Rangers signed Jacob deGrom to a five-year, $185 million deal. You might not have thought about him since.
OK, that’s more than a little unfair. Then again, deGrom made just six starts for Texas in early 2023, then injured his elbow at the end of April, requiring Tommy John surgery that limited him to cheering from the sidelines as the Rangers went on to win the World Series without him. He missed more than 500 days, nearly all of his first two seasons with the team. By the time he came back to make a trio of late-2024 starts, the Rangers were slogging to the end of a forgettable campaign.
Now deGrom is nearing his 37th birthday in June. It’s been six years since he threw even 100 innings in a season, that coming way back in 2019. If you’ve entirely given up on him being an ace starter again, we completely understand.
And yet! Despite the injuries, despite the age, don’t forget that deGrom is the most difficult pitcher to reach base against, well, ever – and he looked pretty great not only in those three outings last September, but also when he threw two perfect innings in his spring debut on Saturday. His career, to date, is basically Mariano Rivera’s, without the saves. He’s thrown as many innings the last five years as Josh Hader has, just more effectively. If availability has been the issue, production never, ever has.
If Chris Sale, at 35, can rebound from years of injuries to hold it together for one more great year to win his first Cy Young, as he did for Atlanta last year, what’s to say deGrom can’t also? And if he can: Wouldn’t a third Cy Young all but guarantee him entry into the Hall of Fame, no matter how short on innings he might end up being? After all, every three-plus-time winner is already in or is certain to make it when eligible, aside from Roger Clemens.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, really. After all, we did say that deGrom “is the most difficult pitcher to reach base against, well, ever.” That’s not minor praise. It’s also not inaccurate. That’s simply a look at on-base percentage – let’s go with a minimum of 1,000 innings all-time here for all of this – and, well, there he is, at the top, above all-time legends.
Lowest OBP allowed, all-time
- .258 // deGrom
- .262 // Rivera & Clayton Kershaw
- .267 // Trevor Hoffman
- .275 // Sandy Koufax & Sale
- .276 // Pedro Martinez
- .277 // Juan Marichal
We haven’t park- or era-adjusted or anything here, but we’re going for simplicity. This is it, right here. “Get outs, don’t let batters reach base” is pitching distilled. No pitcher, ever, has made it harder for batters to reach base off of him than deGrom has in this many innings. The names he’s ahead of hardly need introduction.
It’s true, obviously, that deGrom’s innings total (1,367, to date) is a fraction of Kershaw's (2,742 and counting), to say nothing of the Nolan Ryans and Steve Carltons of history. But it’s also a figure that’s comparable to what Rivera had (1,283 2/3). As we said: deGrom is basically history’s all-time greatest closer, just throwing at the start of the game, not at the end.
In fact, cut it down even further. We used 1,000 innings as a minimum, because that’s a lot, and it’s a nice round number. But let’s slice it in half. Let’s look at the thousands and thousands of pitchers who have ever thrown even 500 innings. All that does to deGrom’s OBP ranking is cut him down to second-best ever, behind Kenley Jansen’s .252, and ahead of Billy Wagner now joining Rivera and Kershaw at .262. There's history’s best closers, and also a guy not eligible for saves.
It’s not just the OBP, either. Highest strikeout rate ever? deGrom, 31%, understanding, of course, that strikeouts are up in more recent times. Largest gap between strikeout rate and walk rate ever? deGrom, 25.3%. Lowest WHIP (walks + hits per inning) ever? You know it, at 0.99, just a touch ahead of – guess who – Rivera. Straight up, boring ERA? Third, at 2.52, since the live ball era began in 1920, behind Rivera and Kershaw. Want to get a little fancier? Let’s take FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching), adjust it for park and era effects, and deGrom’s all-time rank is … second, behind, again, Rivera, ahead of Pedro.
The point is this: The relatively late start to deGrom's career (his first full season came at 27 years old) and the repeated injuries of the last five years will keep him far, far short of the innings totals of most any significant starting pitcher from baseball history. However, we know that the Hall of Fame cases for starters will have to be treated very, very differently in the near future. On a per-inning basis, this is about as effective as pitching has ever been.
None of that matters, though, if he can’t come out and do it again in 2025. So the question now, then: Is it still in there?
It sure looked like it was last September, when deGrom struck out 14 against a single walk in 10 2/3 innings, averaging 97.3 on his fastball with rising action essentially unchanged from before the injury. It looked like it on Saturday, too, when he got his heater up to 98 mph and struck out Bobby Witt Jr. and Tyler Gentry among the six Royals who tried and failed to reach.
It looked, for the most part, like vintage deGrom, at least within the context of “throwing 31 pitches.” The fastball averaged 97 mph, with similar rise and slightly less break as it did in 2019, his most recent full season. His 13 sliders averaged 90.3 mph and moved a lot like they did in 2021. We saw just two curveballs, and no changeups; there’s work yet to be done. But if the point of last fall’s cameo and this spring’s appearances is simply to see if it’s still in there, then so far, so good.
“We don't want to jump to 200-and-something innings,” deGrom told MLB.com in January, “but I'd like to be able to go out there and make 30 [starts]. That's the goal. You sign here to pitch. I haven't been able to do that. So the goal is to go out there and make as many starts as I can to help contribute.”
If Corbin Burnes can win a Cy with 167 innings, as he did in 2021, due to the overwhelming per-inning dominance, then deGrom doesn’t need to get to 200 to win that third award. He’s slotted in, for now, as the fifth starter. He might just be the most talented “fifth starter” to ever live. Then again, that might be true for any of the first four slots, too. It’s too easy to forget just what kind of weapon Texas hasn’t really been able to fully deploy yet.