Guys? We need to talk about Jacob deGrom. There’s something really wrong going on here, and I’m not just talking about unnatural capitalization.
Last night, deGrom pitched a complete-game, two-hit shutout for the Mets. He struck out 15, walked no one, and even got a couple of hits and an RBI himself. One of the two hits he surrendered actually bounced off the centerfielder’s glove as he tried to catch it, and could easily have been called an error, but so be it. The game is already being talked about as one of the greatest non-no-hitter pitching performances of all time. After last night’s game, deGrom currently has the all-time lowest earned run average in Mets’ history (i.e., lower than Tom Seaver). He also set the record for most strikeouts through the first four games of a season.
deGrom is obviously an elite pitcher: Rookie of the year in 2014, back-to-back Cy Young award winner in 2018 and 2019. An overpowering pitching performance, therefore, is not terribly surprising. What is inexplicable, though, is the fact that deGrom has gotten better and better with every passing season. In his rookie year, at the age of 26, his average fastball was around 95 miles an hour—nice, but nothing to write home about. This velocity, though, has gotten higher and higher every season since, until now, at the age of 32, he regularly hits 100-101 miles an hour on his fastball.
This is something that just doesn’t happen. Pitchers in their thirties LOSE velocity. That’s nature. They don’t keep getting stronger. At this rate, deGrom will be throwing 200 miles an hour at age 50.
It’s worth noting that, prior to the 2018 season, deGrom was known as much for his wild hair as his fastball.
Given the reverse-Samson achievements since then, one wonders if deGrom spent some time down at a crossroads somewhere, and if there’s some demon with a sack full of New-York-Met hair and a promissory note for a soul, to be collected at some point after a Hall-of-Fame enshrinement in around the year 2062.
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