The case for deGrom to win 2nd straight Cy

WASHINGTON -- Jacob deGrom won’t finish this season with the type of numbers he posted a year ago. He isn’t finishing quite as strong.

deGrom may be the favorite to win the National League Cy Young Award, regardless.

Pitching into the eighth inning of the Mets’ 11-10 loss to the Nationals on Tuesday, deGrom gave his team the type of length that Max Scherzer, who allowed four runs in his continued comeback from back and shoulder surgeries, could not. While it marked the second straight outing in which deGrom allowed four runs, the performance allowed him to reclaim the NL lead in strikeouts, with 220, while moving to third in innings and fourth in ERA. deGrom is the only NL pitcher to rank in the top four in each of those categories.

“There’s nobody near as good,” Mets manager Mickey Callaway said before that game. “I get the benefit of seeing deGrom every single day, so maybe there’s that bias. I know how hard he works, what he’s able to do, what he goes through, I get to see it day in and day out. But if you look at the numbers, it’s deGrom in my mind. He was deserving last year, and at this point, I feel like he’s deserving this year.”

Here’s deGrom’s NL Cy Young Award case with four (or possibly five, if the Mets shuffle their rotation) starts remaining:

The argument

There may not be an NL pitcher with a more well-rounded resume than deGrom, who ranks in the top eight in the league in ERA, strikeouts, innings, fWAR, bWAR, WHIP and ERA+. Scherzer and Mike Soroka have posted better rate stats, but their resumes lack bulk. Stephen Strasburg leads the league with 16 wins and ranks second with 215 strikeouts, both of which tend to appeal to old-school voters. But if deGrom’s NL Cy Young Award win last year taught us anything, it’s that new-school thinking has become dominant in the baseball writing community.

The issue

Unlike last year, when his sizeable ERA lead made him a near-unanimous choice for the NL Cy Young Award, deGrom finds himself in a murky field in 2019. To win it again, deGrom does not need to run away with the ERA title like he did a year ago. But he does need to stay close enough to the league leaders to keep his resume strong. deGrom wasn’t in realistic contention until Hyun-Jin Ryu blew up for 14 runs in his last two outings, increasing his ERA from 1.64 to 2.35. Now that he’s back within spitting distance of the leaders, deGrom must stay close enough to Ryu, Scherzer and Soroka to maintain an argument that he’s been the NL’s best.

Simply put, deGrom must pitch as well down the stretch as he did a year ago, when a strong September run cemented his award. He may not stand above the pack in any one category, but deGrom rates highly in enough significant ones to make noise in the NL Cy Young Award race. Despite allowing eight runs in his last two outings, deGrom is third in the NL with a 1.91 ERA since the All-Star break; remaining on that sort of run would do wonders for his chances.

The legacy

No Met has won a major BBWAA Award in consecutive seasons. Dwight Gooden came closest, finishing second in NL Cy Young Award voting in 1984 before winning it the following season.

If deGrom can accomplish the feat, it would have implications on things as distant as his Hall of Fame resume, should he pitch well enough into his mid-30s to make that a consideration. Of the 19 pitchers to win multiple Cy Young Awards, 11 of them are in Cooperstown. A 12th, Roger Clemens, would be if not for PED concerns, while two others, Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw, are likely headed to the Hall after they retire.

If that conversation seems awfully far away for a pitcher who has yet to win his 64th career game, that’s because it is. deGrom, who debuted a month before his 26th birthday, may have started his Major League career a bit too late to make the Hall of Fame realistic.

A second Cy Young Award would make him something of a baseball immortal, regardless.

Said Callaway: “If there’s somebody out there better, I can’t imagine who it is.”