Jacob deGrom Is Back To Looking Like His Old Self
Jacob deGrom won't ever be the same pitcher he was when he was winning back-to-back Cy Young Awards, but he's close.
Pitching for a Texas Rangers team that has been struggling to pick up wins lately, right-hander Jacob deGrom is far from the problem. So far this season, he resembles the star the Rangers envisioned they’d be getting when they signed him before the 2023 season.
The former two-time Cy Young winner is part of one of the best starting rotations in the majors six weeks into the season. In year three of his five-year, $185 million contract with Texas, deGrom looks like his old self.
Well, kind of.
He’ll never be the dominant version that mesmerized the baseball world during his ridiculous peak years. But he’s still pretty darn good.
A big reason for that is health. There’s no argument against the fact that deGrom is one of the most talented pitchers of his generation, with the best stuff. His issue in recent years is that he hasn’t been able to stay on the mound.
Despite being 36, deGrom’s arm doesn’t have the mileage of a major league starter on the down slope to 40. He hasn’t thrown more than 100 innings in a non-shortened MLB season since winning his second Cy Young with 204 innings for the New York Mets in 2019. DeGrom has pitched a total of 303 1/3 innings since then.
He threw just 30 1/3 innings in his first season in Texas. He made it through only 10 1/3 frames last year.
Jacob deGrom Has a Different Approach This Season
He’s up to 38 innings this season, going 2-1 with a 2.61 ERA and 1.00 WHIP in seven starts.
DeGrom earned his first win of the year when he put everything together for six shutout innings against the Athletics on April 29. He struck out seven and looked like “Jacob deGrom.”
“There were a lot of strikeouts where he just overpowered the hitters, which is who he is,” his battery mate Jonah Heim said, per MLB.com’s Kennedi Landry. “He’s got that electric fastball. He had them guessing because he was throwing all his pitches for strikes. We had a good game plan going in, and he trusts the buttons I hit. Like I said, he was pretty nasty.”
How has the former ninth-round draft pick been able to be effective and stay healthy?
Following years of injuries and his second Tommy John surgery, deGrom came into the 2025 season with a plan to pull back on his velocity. His most used pitch, the four-seamer, is averaging 96.9 mph this year. If that still seems high, that’s because it is. His fastball velocity still ranks in the 87th percentile and ranks ninth among qualified starters.
After debuting in 2014 with a 94.2 mph fastball, deGrom gradually kept upping his velocity. He peaked at 99.2 mph in 2021. The rest of his pitches followed similar curves. But his arm couldn’t hold up to those speeds, and he broke down, literally.
You can see that he’s throwing all four of his pitches slower. His fastball is closer to the velocity he pitched at when he was dominating hitters in 2018 and 2019:
This Version of Jacob deGrom Is More Than Good Enough
DeGrom won’t ever be the same pitcher he was, but this version is still plenty good enough.
As a wizened veteran with little margin for error should he have to go under the knife again, deGrom is doing enough to still be effective without jeopardizing what’s left of his career. His Statcast sliders are still a sea of red. Most reside in the 80th to 90th percentile range, instead of the high-90s we were seeing just a few years ago.
One noticeable difference this year is that his strikeouts are down. From 2017-24, he posted a strikeout rate of 34%. He struck out a bonkers 1,174 batters in 887 2/3 innings. This year, he’s striking batters out at a more modest 24.2% clip, or 36 batters in his 38 innings.
DeGrom’s slider has been his most effective pitch. It’s the best slider in baseball, per Statcast, tied with Atlanta’s Chris Sale at a +7 Run Value. He throws it 37.6% of the time, stymying hitters to a .164 batting average, .213 slugging percentage and .193 wOBA. He’s generating whiffs with the slider at a 38.1% rate, with a 31.3% strikeout rate.
In his last start, deGrom logged his 1,700th career strikeout in 225 games, making him the fastest pitcher to reach that mark since 1901, according to Landry. Heim explained what makes the veteran hurler so good, even on his “off” days on the mound.
“The guy on the mound is the guy on the mound,” Heim said, per Landry. “He’s got his stuff no matter what the day is, so even when he feels a little off, his stuff’s still going to be there. It’s pretty electric, and like I said before, when he’s throwing all his pitches for strikes and we can use them whenever we want, it’s going to be a pretty good day for us.”
DeGrom still has a long way to go to get through the season unscathed. But he’s off to a good start.
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