Jacob deGrom is the art of pitching elevated to its highest form. He is to pitching what the Lamborghini Veneno is to production cars: the finest, most expensive model ever built with such jaw-dropping power on such a lightweight chassis that had you not witnessed it in motion you would regard such a combination as impossible.
Mookie Betts of the Dodgers was not wrong when after facing deGrom last week he decided, “He’s pretty much the best. Maybe the best to ever pitch.”
Betts was talking pure stuff. deGrom throws the fastest four-seamer of any starting pitcher in recorded history (99.3; minimum 200 pitches, since 2008) and the fastest breaking pitch of any pitcher in recorded history (93.0-mph slider). With all that velocity, his command is so impeccable he has struck out 55 batters and walked only three this year. At age 34, deGrom belongs with 20-year-old Dwight Gooden and 27-year-old Pedro Martínez among pitchers with the best pure stuff I have seen.
That’s what Betts was talking about. Betts is a hitter, not a sabermetrician. He sees from the batter’s box how freakishly great is deGrom’s stuff.
“All of it,” Betts said. “And he kind of lives on the edge, too. Then he has a hundred and one. So when he does leave it out over the plate, you swing and miss or you foul it off. So it’s very hard to hit off him.”
But like the Veneno—no radio and lousy gas mileage—the brilliance of deGrom comes with a trade-off. He has made just six starts this season after missing more than a year due to various injuries. As much as the Mets need deGrom to win the World Series, they cannot push him—not like Orel Hershiser in 1988, Curt Schilling in 2001, Madison Bumgarner in ‘14 or Justin Verlander in ’17.
And that is why the Mets must be very worried about losing their grip on first place in the National League East and the likely first-round bye that comes with it. Up 10 ½ games on June 1 and seven games just 25 days ago, New York holds just a one-game lead over the Braves with 27 to play—including three in Atlanta in the penultimate series of the regular season.
deGrom has never started a game on three days’ rest. He has not made consecutive starts on four days’ rest in 14 months. Over the past three years, he is 10–0 with a 0.95 ERA when the Mets give him extra rest but 5–5 with a 2.53 ERA on four days’ rest. He’ll get an extra day again when he takes the mound Tuesday in Pittsburgh. deGrom hasn’t thrown 100 pitches in a game since April 23, 2021.
deGrom is on track to get six more regular-season starts. The Braves are putting heat on the Mets to make those starts highly competitive rather than tune-ups.
If the Mets fall into a wild-card spot, that’s more work instead of rest for deGrom and a much tougher path for New York. If it advances it would start a division series against the Dodgers without deGrom and Max Scherzer available for Games 1 and 2.
Even holding the No. 2 seed and the bye that comes with it will test deGrom because of the lockout-affected schedule. If deGrom starts Games 1 and 5 of the NLDS, he will get only one start in the NLCS, because Games 3 through 7 are scheduled for consecutive days.
Seeding and scheduling are hugely important this year, especially as it relates to the best pitcher in baseball and, yes, maybe the best ever when it comes to quality and ferocity of stuff.
How great is deGrom? Let’s delineate deGrom with both a long lens and a short lens:
Career
Through 204 games, deGrom has:
- More strikeouts than any pitcher ever (1,560). Yu Darvish is second (1,546).
- The second-lowest ERA (2.48) in the live ball era (since 1920). Only Tom Seaver was better at this point (2.43).
- The lowest ERA in any ballpark in the live ball era: 2.07 at Citi Field (minimum 100 starts). Don Drysdale at Dodger Stadium is second (2.19).
- The lowest batting average allowed the first time through a lineup in the live ball era (.181). Sandy Koufax and Sid Fernandez are second (.190).
- Allowed one or no runs in 100 of his 204 starts, the most by any pitcher through the same number of starts. Clayton Kershaw is second (95).
- The second-lowest career WHIP ever. Only Addie Joss, a fellow who was born 142 years ago, was tougher on hitters.
2022
This season deGrom has:
- Struck out 55 of the 128 batters he has faced while walking just three.
- Retired 36 of the 37 batters leading off an inning.
- Allowed a .083 batting average with two strikes.
- Thrown one fastball in the dirt, the only one among his past 4,585 fastballs since June 2019. One! And that misfire happened because his spikes caught in the dirt.
It may surprise you (but not Betts) that deGrom throws fewer pitches in the strike zone (46%) than the average pitcher (49%). His slider is out of the zone a lot (31%) compared to the MLB average (44%). But the beauty of deGrom is he lives on the outskirts of the zone. That fastest slider ever looks like a strike until the last darting movement—almost always to his glove side, off or below the corner of the strike zone, inside to a lefty and away from a righty.
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More velocity and more of those killer sliders are why deGrom is a better pitcher in his 30s than he was in his 20s.
deGrom has added almost 4 mph to his slider in five years while doubling its use to a career high:
deGrom Slider Year by Year
Even if you compare deGrom this year to his last Cy Young season just three years ago, you can see how much more devastating that slider has become, as he throws it more and buries it lower on the glove side corner:
deGrom Slider
The uptick in velocity also applies to his four-seamer. He is throwing harder for a sixth straight year:
deGrom 4-Seam Velocity
How is possible to be throwing harder at 34? deGrom has taken a fluid, efficient delivery and made it even better. Here’s a look at two sliders from deGrom three years apart—Sept. 14, 2019, a strikeout of AJ Pollock at 91.6 mph (top), and Aug. 25, 2022, a strikeout of Brendan Rodgers at 94.2 mph (bottom)—at three key intervals in his delivery:
1. Top of the delivery
deGrom is in a more tucked, connected position now. His hands stay closer to body than in 2019. He doesn’t take the ball out of glove as far:
2. Ball release
deGrom throws with a firmer front side. See in 2019 how the glove falls low and away from the body. Now the glove is higher and tucked, creating a firmer front side against which to throw:
3. Follow-through
In 2019, deGrom’s head pulls down and to the side, indicating some force. His head stays remarkably still in 2022. The best strike-throwers have “quiet” heads.
The net effect is that deGrom’s famously long extension is actually shorter this year than last year. He has cut his release extension by 2 ½ inches. How? His body control and strength are improved from already supreme levels, probably due to the meticulous physio work he has devoted to get healthy and stay healthy.
deGrom is throwing the baseball better than ever before—and yes, as well as anyone who ever climbed the mound—because his athletic peak (strength and flexibility) is intersecting with the peak efficiency of his delivery.
Here is a look at deGrom’s four-seam release points in 2017 and ‘22 and the ’22 chart of Hunter Greene of the Reds, the next hardest throwing starting pitcher (98.7 mph). Note how deGrom has tightened the cluster of his release points. That tells you how well he repeats his delivery—releasing the fastball from the same spot, which is a key to commanding the baseball.
Fastball release points:
deGrom 2017
deGrom 2022
Greene 2022
Accounting for differences in only release height, not horizontal release, deGrom has cut his release variability by 60%: from 6 inches in 2017 to just 2.4 inches this year. Greene has a release variability of 5.2 inches.
The Veneno was introduced in 2013 with a sticker price of about $4 million. Thirteen cars were produced. Six years later, one of them was auctioned for $8.3 million. You’re not likely to see one being used as a commuter car. If you do see one, you can’t help but think you are gazing upon an expression of engineering evolved to the highest order, in terms of both art and science.
That is how deGrom is pitching right now. He is the Veneno of pitchers. He is a marvel unlike any of his peers. Is he “maybe the best to ever pitch?” That the idea is even worth consideration should tell you to appreciate the rarity of pitching done this well at these incredible speeds.
