At his best, when healthy, Jacob deGrom is untouchable. He pitches in a way that defies not just comparison but explanation. He’s one of the small club of pitchers to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards, and he is the only pitcher ever to begin a career with such impressive, jaw-dropping statistics: His first 200 starts yielded a 2.50 ERA and a strikeout rate above 30%. No one else had done that before, and no one else has done it since, because no one else is Jacob deGrom.
But the most important parts of that paragraph were not the numbers or the awards. They were the caveats at the beginning—at his best, when healthy. The last few years of deGrom’s career have leaned heavily on those conditional phrases: Since winning those back-to-back Cy Youngs in 2018 and ’19, he has not finished a season with more than 95 IP, with prolonged stretches of time lost to injury in ’21 (forearm and elbow) and ’22 (shoulder). And the aging curve ahead will not offer any relief: deGrom turned 34 in June.
So: What kind of contract do you give him this winter as a free agent?
