{"id":626708,"date":"2026-05-06T11:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/626708\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T11:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:05:14","slug":"jacob-degrom-is-still-dealing-and-stirring-a-fascinating-hof-debate-with-the-rangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/626708\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacob deGrom is still dealing \u2014 and stirring a fascinating HOF debate \u2014 with the Rangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years can pass like an eternity in baseball. It is a stretch of time where careers can begin and end, where young players can flourish into stars, where stars can fade into the backdrop.<\/p>\n

Only five years ago, when Jacob deGrom was at the peak of his powers, he was openly talking to ESPN <\/a>about not only pitching into his 40s but also his Cooperstown aspirations.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo become an inner-circle Hall of Famer,\u201d he had said, \u201cI\u2019m gonna have to play that long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those words take on a different meaning now, after the second Tommy John surgery and so much time missed, after a five-year, $185 million contract with the Texas Rangers that has brought great spoils but also cast deGrom out of baseball\u2019s brightest lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once the sport\u2019s most dominant pitcher in Queens, these days deGrom is tucked away in Texas, still elusive despite fewer cameras, hardened after all the injuries and a life on the mound that somehow seems both long and short at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI faced him,\u201d said Rangers manager Skip Schumaker, whose playing career ended in 2015. \u201cI can\u2019t believe he\u2019s still pitching. That\u2019s what\u2019s most impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Good as deGrom remains \u2014 he surrendered four runs in six innings Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, the first time he allowed more than one run in five starts \u2014 has he somehow become underrated? Is there a better pitcher talked about less than deGrom?<\/p>\n

As the spotlight has jumped to the likes of Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, and as veterans such as Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer have morphed into pitching sages, deGrom occupies a strange space in between. No longer the talk of the sport, not quite the revered deity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, deGrom has continued doing what he\u2019s done ever since the day someone suggested the lanky Stetson shortstop step on the mound and see how hard he could throw. He gets hitters out and punishes them with a power few pitchers have ever possessed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His career statistics are remarkable in all sorts of different ways. This is his age-38 season, and yet he entered Tuesday having thrown 1,571 career innings, fewer than younger peers such as Jos\u00e9 Berrios and Michael Wacha.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the flip side, deGrom\u2019s 2.56 career ERA before Tuesday\u2019s start is not only the best among active pitchers. It\u2019s second only to Clayton Kershaw (2.53) for the best career ERA for a starting pitcher since 1949.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His combination of power and command is not just rare. deGrom\u2019s 5.37 strikeout-to-walk ratio is the best of any pitcher ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s not really evolved,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cHe still throws 100.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumaker is correct in spirit. deGrom\u2019s fastball averages 97.1 mph. His stuff is as electric as you\u2019ll find, the type of arsenal that haunts hitters in their nightmares. But where deGrom was once the game\u2019s preeminent king of velocity \u2014 he threw 185 pitches at 100 mph or greater in 2021 \u2014 he has reached triple digits only six times since his 2024 return from a second Tommy John surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think now, it\u2019s not max effort every pitch,\u201d deGrom said Sunday from the Comerica Park dugout, shortly before flying ahead to New York. \u201cThere were a few years where I was letting it rip as hard as I could every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this day, Hunter Greene and Jacob Misiorowski are the only pitchers to exceed the 100 mph threshold more than deGrom since the dawn of the pitch-tracking era in 2008. deGrom does not necessarily think of himself as a different pitcher now versus a few years ago. His raw stuff always took attention away from his precise command. But as he thinks about it, he admits he\u2019s become more artful than the guy whose four-seamer once averaged 99.2 mph.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always gone out there, and if I look up and it\u2019s 95, well, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve got that day,\u201d deGrom said. \u201cIt\u2019s figuring out how to navigate through a lineup. So maybe I pitch a little bit more, versus, \u2018Here it is at 100 percent, let\u2019s see if you can hit it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

If deGrom is in many respects performing as well as ever,\u00a0 some of why he may be overlooked stems from his geography. Pitching for the Rangers does not bring the same acclaim nor the same scrutiny as pitching for the Mets. If we\u2019re being honest, this life suits deGrom better. He came up as a small-town kid from Florida who once drove a white truck that lacked working headlights<\/a>. He never really loved the New York glitz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of that thought also spawns from his history. When deGrom hit the shelf for his second Tommy John in June of 2023, some in the industry marked the procedure as an obituary. We are only now learning more about how pitchers respond to what surgeons refer to as UCL revisions. Although Shohei Ohtani, deGrom and Rangers teammate Nathan Eovaldi are among those redefining what is possible, deGrom admits there was doubt when he first had the procedure.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou try not to let the doubt creep in,\u201d deGrom said. \u201cYou know that there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel. The goal is to get back on a major-league mound. You don\u2019t know what that\u2019s going to look like until you start throwing.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were good days and bad days during that rehab. He had to power through the bad ones. And on the good ones, he had to remind himself to take things slow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three years later, deGrom is not only revived. He is finding new ways to dominate (though the home-run ball to left-handed hitters has grown into an issue). His changeup has always been a dangerous option. But where he once viewed it as his third pitch after the fastball and slider, the changeup has morphed, generating more depth \u2014 32.7 inches of vertical drop compared to 28.4 in 2018 \u2014 and becoming arguably his top secondary offering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first came up, all the metric stuff wasn\u2019t in depth,\u201d deGrom said. \u201cIt was all based on, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s see what swings are. I would get a lot of swings and misses on my slider. So, \u2018Hey, I really like that pitch.\u2019 But now here, my changeup grades as one of my best pitches. Like, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll mix that in a little bit more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

People around the Rangers often marvel at deGrom\u2019s levels of perception. On the mound, he is attuned to everything from his release point to the angle of his foot on the rubber. In his own reserved way, he\u2019s a fountain of knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis mechanics \u2026 he can nitpick as good anybody exactly what is going on, the reasons behind it pitch to pitch,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cIt\u2019s just like a hitter. When you make the adjustment pitch to pitch, you\u2019re elite. Pitchers who are pitch-to-pitch and make the adjustment now and not the next inning or the next game, they\u2019re elite. And he can make the adjustment after that one pitch just on a feeling. Lower half, upper half, doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s one of the more impressive things that I\u2019ve watched.\u201d<\/p>\n

deGrom is a creature of habit dedicated to his routine, constantly checking in with his own body. Some of that is a product of all the injuries he has faced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou felt like you knew it before,\u201d deGrom said. \u201cThe injuries that I\u2019ve had \u2014 two Tommy Johns, a stress reaction or fracture in my scap \u2014 those are injuries that you can\u2019t do anything about. It\u2019s like, \u2018Well, they happen now.\u2019 That forced me to miss significant time. The goal is to stay ahead of all that with the in-between stuff, shoulder care, treatments and not trying to do too much in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

His career has been fascinating from the start. He was once a late-bloomer, the converted shortstop who did not debut until 26. Then he was the long-armed righty whose velocity spiked at an age it was supposed to begin declining. FanGraphs once wrote that the average pitcher lost 2 mph from age 26 to 32. DeGrom gained more than 4 mph during those years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His legacy with the Mets lives on like Nirvana \u2014 revered despite only three studio albums. But we should remember that deGrom\u2019s catalogue with the Rangers could be far from finished. He made 30 starts last season and finished with a 2.97 ERA. Despite a mediocre final line Tuesday, he still owns a 2.65 ERA so far this year.<\/p>\n

And with that comes the bigger picture. For all his injuries, it is easy to forget deGrom surpassed 200 innings in three consecutive seasons from 2017-19. Sometimes it felt like it would be that way forever. Maybe it was easier then to think about Cooperstown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first came up it was OK, I had some success,\u201d deGrom said. \u201cThen it was, can I repeat that? Can I repeat that? Can I repeat that?\u201d<\/p>\n

deGrom now figures to become a fascinating Hall of Fame case study for a pitcher of his era. His is a tale of a pitcher who flew too close to the sun in a game where extreme velocity is so often offset by extreme risk of injury. How will voters in the future balance peak dominance versus sustained success?\u00a0<\/p>\n

At his height, deGrom was one of the most fearsome arms the game has seen since the likes of Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens hung up their spikes. In the past 17 seasons, only Aaron Nola\u2019s 9.7 bWAR campaign in 2018 topped the 9.4 bWAR deGrom accumulated in that same season.<\/p>\n

Of course, deGrom threw only 197 innings in a four-season stretch from 2021-24. He posted a 2.01 ERA even in that disjointed time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The injuries, though, have also done their part to mar the totality of deGrom\u2019s work. His lifetime bWAR sits at 46.7. The average WAR for Hall of Fame starters is 73.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, here deGrom is, still performing, a little wiser for all the wear. He says, of course, his primary goal is to help the Texas Rangers win ballgames. It\u2019s harder these days to look ahead. The game has taught him to appreciate the here and now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try not to think about (the Hall of Fame),\u201d deGrom said. \u201cAfter every start, it\u2019s onto the next one, good, bad, whatever. That one\u2019s over with. Now it\u2019s what can I do to get ready for the next team I\u2019m going to face?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooperstown remains the game\u2019s ultimate honor. And regardless of what these next few seasons hold, deGrom could be the ultimate test for what the next generation of Hall of Fame pitchers looks like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I can go out there and continue to have success,\u201d he said, \u201cmaybe I\u2019ll have a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five years can pass like an eternity in baseball. It is a stretch of time where careers can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,1189,369,99,2330],"class_list":["post-626708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-sports","tag-texas-rangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}