It feels a bit redundant to say there’s only been one Jacob deGrom. At this point, most of you know the story: A shortstop from a small college with minimal pitching experience gets drafted and put on the mound. Fast forward a few years, and he’s a member of the “Five Aces” Mets rotation. Then he cut his hair and leveled up into the single-most absurd pitcher we’ve ever seen. Then he got hurt and missed about three seasons’ worth of games in four years. He then made his improbable comeback last year, albeit looking a bit more human. After all of that, he is still doing things nobody else can, despite being a month shy of his 38th birthday.
Respect Your Elders
Jacob deGrom is old. At least for a pitcher, anyway. If anyone has told him this, I don’t think he got the memo. He’s averaging 97.2 mph on his fastball this season. That’s actually faster than it was during his 1.72 ERA Cy Young-winning 2018 season. It has him knocking on the door of the top 10 fastest in the league.
Top Starting Pitcher Fastball Velocity
Why yes, that is Paul Skenes sitting tied with baseball’s senior-most ace. It goes without saying that this doesn’t usually happen. I’m going to say more anyway, though.
Pitches Thrown 97+ MPH In Age-37 Season or Later
Now, while some of these guys managed to throw 97 into even later years than deGrom has reached, it should stick out that he’s already lapped the field more than seven times. More than just velocity, deGrom’s early success this season is nearly unprecedented. There is a singular season by a pitcher who was 37 at the start of the year that has posted a K%-BB% higher than the 28.2% deGrom sports right now. Randy Johnson in 2001. You couldn’t find better company if you searched the entire history of the sport.
K%-BB%, often favored as one of the best predictors of success, has always been deGrom’s bread and butter. There isn’t a starter in MLB history with a better rate than his career 25.0%**. This is due in large part to the fact that there may not have ever been a pitcher with a better combination of bat-missing stuff and pinpoint command.
He’s Still Doing It
The thing that I love about deGrom is that you know exactly what he’s going to do. His ability to execute his game plan could almost work against him, given its predictability. He is going to throw fastballs high and away, and he’s going to throw sliders down and to the glove side. He’s been doing this for almost a decade, and it just doesn’t matter.
It would be one thing if it were just that he could spot his pitches like this. However, deGrom still has marquee stuff to offer. You don’t run a 32.8% strikeout rate with location alone.
As it always has for him, it starts with the fastball. On top of the already-praised velocity, it has a great shape, with above-average total movement that is also well separated from the dead zone for his release. It’s been one of the best fastballs in the league for a long time
His slider remains his best pitch, however. There are so few pitches like it. The ability to throw a breaking ball with that much power and depth at the same time is exceptionally rare. At present, there isn’t another breaking ball in the majors with a lower IVB at that velocity. A true gyro slider coming in at 91. Chase Burns is the only other starter with a breaking ball in the same tier. These two pitches, with the command he possesses, are unfair. They are a perfect match; 4-seamers and gyro sliders go together wonderfully.
In true deGrom fashion, his changeup is another offering that most pitchers would do anything to be able to throw. It checks every box I look for in an offspeed pitch. He doesn’t significantly modify his release to throw it. It has a spin direction and active spin percentage that are reasonably similar to his fastball. 7.3 mph of velocity separation isn’t quite elite territory, but it’s more than enough when you have 15.5” of IVB separation.
This pitch falls off a table in more ways than one. It has substantial depth on its own, but to be nearly vertically neutral with a spin direction above 2:00 makes life that much tougher for hitters. That seam-shifted wake is essentially the only way to get that much movement separation while maintaining both spin-based and release deception. It is, in theory, one of the best changeups in the league.
His curveball has always been a more distant fourth or even fifth pitch in his arsenal. It’s changed a little bit over the years. It was originally a gyro curve/depthy slider, but it took on a more slurvy shape around the time he started sitting 99. It still has sweepier break now, but he’s dialed back the velo a bit in favor of more movement.
Stuff grading metrics will likely vary in opinion on this change. Personally, I think this is a better fit for his arsenal given his usage of it. He throws this pitch when he wants a free strike, and because he’s deGrom, he can zone his fourth pitch at a 95th percentile rate for curveballs.
It should not come as a surprise that this pitch works. Think about it; he’s deGrom. No hitter in their right mind is sitting on anything other than a fastball or slider, ever. You have to be ready for those. So when this thing comes out of his hand looking like it’s going to miss the zone off the arm side, only to bend into it, you just have to tip your cap and hope he doesn’t do that to you again.
Worse still for the poor hitters, he’s picked up a knack for landing it low and off the glove side like his slider, meaning it’s starting belt-high in the zone. If you see a pitch belt-high, you go into swing mode. What happens when you go into swing mode on a pitch coming in 10-16 mph slower than anything you’d be expecting, that is then sweeping its way down and out of the zone? Nothing good.
I know this is a lot to say about a pitch he throws 5% of the time, and certainly that scarcity is to its benefit. It’s much harder to hit pitches that come as a complete surprise. I do think he could stand to throw this pitch more; he executes it really well. That said, he doesn’t need to. Because he’s deGrom.
He’s thrown a scant few sinkers this season, too. This is the first time since 2019 he’s thrown a pitch Statcast tracked as a sinker. I decided to look for any potential mislabels in the mix and found one lone pitch that might have been a sinker, but I think it’s more likely it was a 4-seam that just came out of his hand wrong. His sinker used to be an important piece in his arsenal for contact suppression. He scrapped it in favor of avoiding contact altogether, but it could be an interesting pitch to work in on righties occasionally.
Last year, I referenced deGrom’s arsenal as an example of a pronator’s triangle. What this refers to is a 4-seam fastball, gyro slider, and changeup that make a neat, distinct triangle on the movement chart, like so:
(Image courtesy of BaseballSavant)
The irony at the time was that even though he did technically complete the triangle, he really only needed the fastball and slider portions to mow down hitters. Realistically, that gives him more to work with than most pitchers ever attain. However, we saw him trying new things upon his return to full-time starting in 2025. He slightly upped the usage of his curveball and changeup, and did so again this season.
The reason for this shift is open to speculation, but I would assume he wanted to diversify his arsenal to counteract the effects aging and arm injuries have had on his stuff. Which, in context, is funny given how good his stuff still is compared to most pitchers. Again, he probably didn’t need to do this, but he did anyway.
Things to Work On?
None.
Fine.
After everything else we’ve gone over, it’s a little hard to believe I’m about to comment on something he could improve upon. While his changeup is phenomenal in terms of stuff and how it fits in his arsenal, it is also the only pitch in his mix that he doesn’t command particularly well. He used to do a slightly better job with this, so perhaps his tinkering for an even better pitch has caused it to falter? Regardless, I try to find a few things in every breakdown that a pitcher could work on. This is the only thing I have for deGrom.
It’s been eight years since the best season of his career, and five since he tried to steal fire from the gods and had to be shut down with elbow trouble after putting up the best half-season of pitching I have ever seen. To say that he defies conventional wisdom about how pitchers age doesn’t really do it justice. After all those arm and back problems, he shouldn’t be able to do any of what he’s doing now. At this point, his longevity is about as one-of-a-kind as his prime was. Appreciate him while he’s here; there won’t ever be another one.
*John Smoltz’s data is incomplete; his age-37 season came before the pitch-tracking era, leaving some starts unaccounted for.
**This is subject to change. Skenes and Sale are right on his heels
***He hasn’t thrown enough sinkers yet this year for Savant to have posted the advanced spin data
