Jacob deGrom is a great pitcher, when he can pitch
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at starting pitcher Jacob deGrom.
Here are the pitchers with the lowest ERAs in Texas Rangers* team history, with a minimum of 40 innings pitched for the Rangers:
Kirby Yates — 1.17 ERA in 61.2 IP
Joe Nathan — 2.09 ERA in 129 IP
Akinori Otsuka — 2.25 ERA in 92 IP
Jeff Terpko — 2.26 ERA in 59.2 IP
Darren O’Day — 2.41 ERA in 134.1 IP
Jacob deGrom — 2.41 ERA in 41 IP
Koji Uehara — 2.50 ERA in 54 IP
* I count Texas Rangers’ team history as dating back to 1972. I don’t count their time as the Senators. I think that’s because, mentally, when a team changes locations but not team name, such as the A’s (who are about to play in their fourth and fifth homes in the next several years) or the Giants, I think of them as the same team, but when a team relocates and picks a new name, like the St. Louis Browns becoming the Baltimore Orioles, my head canon is that they are different teams.
When I ran this search, I thought to myself, Jeff Terpko, that’s a name I haven’t heard in forever and yet I think I heard it very recently. And sure enough, the poster formerly known as IrishP1 mentioned Terpko this morning in the morning links thread because it is his birthday. This is an example of what Carl Jung called synchronicity.
Other than Terpko, we’ve got mostly 21st century relievers. The Great Yates. Joe Nathan. Darren O’Day, whose presence reminds me once again that I’m mad at the Rangers for waiving him after the 2011 season.
And there, mixed in with the relievers, is one starting pitcher — Jacob deGrom.
Only three starting pitchers in Rangers history have an ERA of under 3.00 in at least 40 innings — deGrom, Bert Blyleven (2.74), and Jordan Montgomery (2.79).
I have another list for you. Here is a list of every Texas Rangers pitcher with at least 5 innings pitched for the Texas Rangers and a FIP of less than 2.00:
Al Lachowicz — 1.51 FIP in 8 IP
Jacob deGrom — 1.74 FIP in 41 IP
We talk about the greatness of Jacob deGrom, we have seen him pitch for the Rangers (albeit in not nearly as many games as we would have hoped), and yet, I’m not sure we really grok how amazing a pitcher deGrom really is. I look at the lists above and my mind boggles.
Did you know that Jacob deGrom is not just the active leader in career WHIP, he is 2nd all time? He is one of three pitchers in MLB history to pitch at least 1000 innings and have a WHIP of less than one. The other two are Addie Joss, a Hall of Fame pitcher in the 19-aughts for Cleveland, and Ed Walsh, a Hall of Fame pitcher who pitched for the White Sox from 1904-16 and the Braves, briefly, in 1917.
Number four on the list? Mariano Rivera.
Did you know that Jacob deGrom has the best K/BB ratio in MLB history, at 5.41 K/BB? Only two other pitchers with at least 1000 innings pitched have a K/BB ratio of at least 5 — Chris Sale, who you may be familiar with, and Tommy Bond, who pitched in the 19th century, which I’m not sure even really existed. Hell, only 18 pitchers have a K/BB ratio of better than 4.0. Its a fascinating list, containing modern future Hall of Famers like Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole and Clayton Kershaw, actual Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, “best pitcher in baseball for a period of time” candidates Corey Kluber and Stephen Strasburg, then some weird random names like Michael Pineda and Josh Tomlin.
We got three Jacob deGrom starts this season. You are forgiven if you didn’t see them or forgot about them, because by the time he was activated the Rangers were out of the playoff hunt and folks had largely tuned them out.
But those three starts — even with the pitch count restrictions deGrom had — were magnificent.
44 batters faced by deGrom in 2024. 14 Ks, 1 walk, 1 home run allowed, two runs. A 1.69 ERA, a 2.32 FIP, a 2.56 xERA, a 2.81 xFIP. All from a guy who hadn’t pitched in the majors in like 16 months, who was essentially shaking off the rust and looking to face some major league batters to allow him to have a normal offseason routine.
The Texas Rangers signed Jacob deGrom to a massive contract after the 2022 season, despite his coming off a pair of injury-plagued seasons, because he was the best pitcher in baseball. His performance for the Rangers, when he has been on the mound, would seem to indicate that is still the case. When he is healthy, the Rangers not only have a legitimate #1 starter, they have a #1 starter who is, at worst, on par with the #1 starter of any other team in baseball, any team they might face in the playoffs.
Yes, the “when healthy” part is a big qualifier, but its worth noting deGrom, prior to 2021, was a workhorse. He pitched 200+ innings each year from 2017-19. From 2017 through 2020, he threw the most innings of anyone in the majors, slightly ahead of Gerrit Cole.
Yes, he missed time in 2021 and 2022 with the New York Mets, and for some reason it created a narrative that he was a guy who was always hurt, who couldn’t stay on the mound. Missing most of 2023 and 2024 due to Tommy John surgery simply reinforced that.
But Jacob deGrom does not appear to be a guy whose body is falling apart. He is not Max Scherzer, dealing with diminished stuff, in a physical decline that he is trying to resist through sheer force of will. He’s not a guy with tons of miles on his arm, someone who carried huge workloads as a young pitcher that he’s now paying the price for.
Jacob deGrom, when he is on the mound, is still Jacob deGrom. He’s 36, he’s undergone two Tommy John surgeries, but the stuff is still there, the command is still there, he’s still elite.
One of the positives to take away from a disappointing September that ended a disappointing 2024 season is that Jacob deGrom showed he is still Jacob deGrom. And that gives the Rangers a big leg up heading into 2025.
Previously: