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Jacob deGrom should win the Cy Young and it’s not even close

By Tre LyDay

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 02: Jacob deGrom #48 of the New York Mets walks back to the dugout after he made the out at first to end the second inning against the Atlanta Braves on May 2, 2018 at Citi Field in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 02: Jacob deGrom #48 of the New York Mets walks back to the dugout after he made the out at first to end the second inning against the Atlanta Braves on May 2, 2018 at Citi Field in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /
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Mets’ pitcher Jacob deGrom has dominated pretty much every team he’s faced. But that’s only part of why he should win the Cy Young award.

The New York Mets are bad. They’re 59-74 as of Thursday and sit a whopping 15.5 games out of first place in the National League East. That 11-1 start they had at the beginning of the season seams like ages ago.

The lone bright spot this season other than the current tear Zach Wheeler is on has been none other than Jacob deGrom. Nationals’ pitcher Max Scherzer has won the last two Cy Young awards, but it doesn’t look like he’ll get a third. At least he really shouldn’t.

Before we get into why he should win the Cy Young award. I must preface this by saying that pitcher wins should hold absolute no value when voting for Cy Young, and deGrom is a perfect example why it should hold zero value.

The easiest case to make is to take a look at the season he is having, and compare it to Clayton Kershaw’s MVP season. Whether you think pitchers should win MVP or not his numbers were otherworldly. That and the fact that there really wasn’t a clear choice for MVP in 2014.

deGrom has a higher K/9, a lower ERA, a higher WAR and is going to end up with more starts than Kershaw had in 2014. Interestingly enough there is once again no clear favorite for National League MVP this season. Maybe Javier Baez or Matt Carpenter, but cases can be made other guys including deGrom.

Now you might say that because that since the Mets are an awful team then deGrom doesn’t have any meaningful starts in comparison to Scherzer. You’d be partially right because yes he doesn’t have any ‘meaningful’ starts, but 19 of deGrom’s 27 starts have come against teams above .500. In those 19 starts he has a 1.47 ERA with an 11.12 K/9. Clearly it doesn’t matter who he faces because they’re probably not going to score more than two runs against him.

deGrom has had to be borderline perfect just to even give the Mets a chance of winning the games he starts. The pitchers that oppose him have combined to throw 148 innings with a 2.49 ERA. This is part of the reason deGrom has the highest average leverage index of a starter in the last 13 years.

As it stands he has an ERA of 1.68. In the live ball era only eight starting pitchers have finished with a lower ERA than deGrom, and he has a legitimate chance to get into the top four of that list. He’s done all of this and somehow only has eight wins this season. Wins don’t matter just let the numbers speak for themselves. It’s not a matter of should he win, it’s how wide the margin is going to be.

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