Historically, being considered for a Cy Young Award, otherwise known as the Best Pitcher Award, meant recording more wins than others. This resulted in Cy Young Award winners boasting 18-, 20- and sometimes 20+ win-seasons. In 2018, Mets SP Jacob deGrom won the Cy Young Award–and recorded 10 wins.
deGrom’s Background
Growing up in Florida, a young Jacob deGrom thrived in two sports: baseball and basketball. It was the former that deGrom would be named to the All-Florida second team after his senior year and that he would enroll at Stetson University to continue playing at a high level.
Although he wasn’t drafted out of high school in 2008, deGrom still managed to pave his way to the MLB.
He began at Stetson as a shortstop, and it wasn’t until his sophomore season that he made his first relief appearance as a pitcher. In his first appearance, against UCF, deGrom needed just 6 pitches to retire the side in order – 2 groundouts and a strikeout.
A true shortstop, deGrom was initially against pitching and frequently argued with his college coach about the idea. However, upon returning for his junior season at Stetson, deGrom would inevitably be utilized at the team’s closer, meaning coming into the final innings of close games to hold the lead and win the game, in addition to being the team’s starting shortstop.
After quickly being realized as one of the team’s most talented pitchers, deGrom was moved into the rotation, which meant he would be pitching earlier and for longer throughout the game. His junior year he totaled 12 starts for Stetson, holding a 4-5 win-loss record with a 4.49 ERA. He pitched 82.1 innings total, allowing 41 earned runs on 103 hits (including 5 home runs). Impressively, deGrom struck 53 hitters out, while only walking 16–good for a 3.3 strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB).
As a hitter, deGrom slashed .263/.324/.347 (Avg / On-Base% / Slug%), and for what it’s worth hit only one home run off a lanky Florida Gulf Coast University lefty that threw from an almost-sidearm armslot, Chris Sale.
Due to a limited track record and subpar results, deGrom wasn’t selected in the 2010 MLB Draft until the 9th round (272nd overall) by the New York Mets.
deGrom would grind through about 3 years of minor league pitching, which included him undergoing Tommy John surgery after partially tearing his UCL after his first 6 professional starts. Because of the lengthy recovery required, deGrom didn’t pitch in 2011–instead, he worked on his changeup with one Mets ace Johan Santana, who was also rehabbing an arm injury.
Through 2012 and 2013, deGrom would traverse his way through the Mets’ lower minor leagues like Class-A Savannah and Class A-Advanced Port St. Lucie. In 2013, injuries to the Double-A starting rotation warranted a promotion for the young deGrom and, in June, Triple-A came calling after promotions to the major-league club, which included Zack Wheeler, opened up starting roles. After the 2013 season, deGrom would add the curveball to his pitch arsenal.
Promotion to the MLB and the Beginning of ‘deGromination’
Beginning the year in Triple-A, deGrom was finally promoted to the Mets on May 12, 2014 after an injury to pitcher Gonzalez Germen. The plan to use deGrom from the bullpen was quickly altered when starter Dillon Gee went down with an injury, opening up a spot in the rotation that deGrom would take and never give back.
In his MLB debut, deGrom, pitching against the New York Yankees in what’s known as the “Subway Series,” threw 7 innings, allowing one run and striking out 6 Yankee hitters. Despite his terrific performance on the mound, the Mets lost 1-0, perhaps providing an omen of what would become a theme of the young Jacob deGrom’s career.
Pitching to a 14-8 record with a 2.54 ERA and 0.99 WHIP (walks + hits per inning pitched, essentially meaning how much base traffic he was allowing) in 2015, deGrom made his first All-Star team and even gained postseason experience as the Mets made the World Series. In his first postseason start in Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the Dodgers, deGrom went 7 innings and struck out 13, tying Tom Seaver’s franchise record for strikeouts in a postseason game! In the same series, Game 5, deGrom went 6 innings, allowing 2 runs and lifting the Mets to the next round of the postseason.
The National League Championship Series brought the Chicago Cubs. In Game 3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago, deGrom pitched 7 innings, allowing 2 runs on 4 hits, one walk, and striking out 7. Finally, in the 2015 World Series the Mets faced the Kansas City Royals, and deGrom, starting Game 2 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, went 5 innings, allowing 4 runs on 6 hits, while walking 3 and striking out a measly 2 hitters.
An All Star nod, a World Series appearance and a 7th place finish in NL Cy Young voting was just the beginning to deGrom’s dominance, which truly started to take form in 2018.
2018 remains one of the greatest seasons any pitcher has put together in the history of baseball, and for good reason. Prior to the season, the Mets and deGrom were able to avoid arbitration and agree to a salary for the 2018 season, but that wouldn’t be the end of financial discussions between the parties for the year (Brodie Van Wagenen, deGrom’s agent, would publicly call on the Mets to pay him or trade him). That, however, did not seem to bother deGrom.
deGrom finished the 2018 season with a 1.70 ERA, the lowest in the MLB and was the third-lowest of any pitcher with 30 starts in a season since the pitching mound was lowered following the 1968 season. In September of 2018, deGrom tied (and would break) an MLB record with his 25th straight start allowing 3 or fewer runs. He won the NL Cy Young easily, and even received a first-place vote for NL Most Valuable Player.
deGrom won 10 games that year. He lost 9 games.
10 wins were, and still are, the fewest number of wins ever totaled by a Cy Young-winning pitcher.
What made deGrom so dominant in 2018? Should baseball have seen this coming? Let’s take a look.
What changed for deGrom?
Let’s first take a look at the 2016-2017 percentile rankings from Baseball Savant for deGrom.
deGrom ranked in the 67th percentile (93.9 mph) and 81st percentile (95.1 mph) in fastball velocity in 2016 and 2017, respectively. This means that he was throwing harder than 2 out of 3 of the pitchers in the league in 2016 and 4 out of 5 in 2017.
In the same two years, he was able to raise his strikeout rate (K%) from 23.7% to 28.9%. He managed to increase his fastball velocity and strikeout occurrence with a loss of control, keeping his walk-rate (BB%) very respectable at 7.1% in 2017.
In 2016, deGrom was not particularly good at getting guys to chase, meaning that hitters weren’t swinging at balls out of the strike zone, but he rose to the 73rd percentile of the category in 2017. He also markedly improved his Whiff Rate from 2016 to 2017, meaning batters were swinging and missing more at his pitches (24.8% to 29.8%). What this shows is deGrom was overpowering hitters more than deceiving them. It wouldn’t be until 2018 that everything would come together.
Above are the 2018 rankings, also from Baseball Savant.
The first thing to point out is the effectiveness of all deGrom’s pitches in 2018. His arsenal was the highest valued arsenal in all of baseball. His fastball was in the 97th percentile, his breaking ball (slider) was in the 98th, and his changeup was in the 99th. Is that good?
His fastball velo kept rising, now averaging 95.9 mph. That chase rate we were talking about not being great? That was now in the 97th percentile in all of baseball at 35.1%. He also continued to strike out an outrageous amount of batters (32.2% K%) and walk the fewest amount of batters (5.5% BB%) in his career other than 2015 (5.1% BB%).
In addition to chase-rate, another area of significant improvement was his ability to lower his barrel-rate. Barrels, according to MLB.com, refers to “batted-ball events whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage since Statcast was implemented Major League wide in 2015.” By doing so, deGrom was erasing potential hits with devastating effects on his team in terms of opposing runs. He single-handedly gave his team a tremendous probability to succeed each and every outing he pitched.
In 2017, deGrom gave up an unfortunate 1.25 home runs-per-nine innings (HR/9) with a 16.1% home runs to fly balls ratio (HR/FB). In 2018, he cut his HR/9 to 0.41 and his HR/FB ratio to 6.3%.
That makes deGrom’s 2018 breakout season even more impressive. He wasn’t predicted to break out. His 3.32 FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching) in 2016 and 3.50 FIP in 2017 suggested that, even with fielders’ (lack of) abilities in the field, he wasn’t pitching like some god amongst men. However, in 2018, something changed and he absolutely dominated.
deGrom raised his strikeouts-per-9 to over 11 (11.16), lowered his walks-per-9 to under 2 (1.91).
It was deGrom’s stuff, complemented by control and command, that catapulted him into an echelon of pitching that many believe to be unprecedented and unmatched since. For readers unfamiliar with those terms, here’s how I define them:
- Stuff → what the pitcher has in his repertoire; combination of velocity, spin rate and deception, making it as difficult as possible for a hitter to see and to make contact with the pitch
- Control → refers to a pitcher’s ability to choose and execute a location of a pitch relative to a hitter’s positioning
- Command → often used interchangeably with control, but more refers to the ability of a pitcher to make his pitches act in the same way characteristically each and every time
Taking a look at the first table above, deGrom was able to increase his velocity from 93.5 mph his rookie year to 96.0 in 2018 (it would get much, much faster through his career). His slider got up to 91.1 mph and his changeup was sitting 89.0 mph. He began to use his fastball, slider and changeup as his three main pitches, while lessening the extent he used his sinker and his curve.
This became a deadly trio in and of itself, because all three pitches looked exactly the same out of his hand and, depending on which pitch was coming, would either fall out of the air and swing horizontally or fade out of the batter’s box never to be touched. This is the core of what made deGrom unhittable in 2018.
The last visual I’ll show is deGrom’s location for his fastball, slider, and changeup (this perspective is the from behind home plate). All three of these pitches looked the same out of his hand and finished in three completely different spots. Good luck, hitters.
Inner Half 