New York Mets: Imagining Jacob deGrom … with an offense

How might New York Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom have done with a world championship offense behind him? Re-imagining his  remarkable 2018 season

By now, baseball fans are comfortable with the idea that Jacob deGrom’s 10-9 regular season record said a lot more about the languid condition of the New York Mets offense than it did about deGrom’s pitching.

For the record, the National League Cy Young Award winner led the majors with a 1.70 ERA in 32 starts, allowing more than two runs in only seven of them and allowing more than three runs only once. In 11 of his starts, he pitched seven innings or more while allowing two or fewer runs yet failed to win.

And that raises a provocative if whimsical question: What kind of record would deGrom have had if he had pitched for a team with a more productive offense?

(Actually, it may not be all that whimsical a question at all in a year or two. DeGrom won’t be a free agent until the end of the 2020 season. But he and his agent are already demanding the working out of a long-term extension before the regular season begins. That, however, is another topic.)

DeGrom’s Mets averaged only 4.2 runs per game in 2018, ranking in a tie for 22nd in baseball in that category. With deGrom on the mound, they were worse than that, averaging just 3.5 runs per game during his starts.

The Boston Red Sox were baseball’s top team in run production in 2018, at 5.4 runs per game. What record might deGrom have compiled if he had pitched for the Red Sox instead of the Mets?

Obviously, on a strictly factual basis, the question is unanswerable for a host of reasons, not least of which is that DeGrom would have been facing different opponents in different settings. Still it’s intriguing to ponder since it might put deGrom’s 2018 season into a new perspective.

Exploring the question requires a few stipulations. Here they are. We’ll stipulate that deGrom started on the same days for the Red Sox as he actually did for the Mets, that Boston ‘s offense was as productive or unproductive on those days as it actually was, and that the Red Sox pen performed as it actually did once deGrom left the game.

If deGrom pitched on a day when the Red Sox did not have a game, those performances will be skipped for purposes of this exercise. That happened three times, so it reduces deGrom’s comparable starts from 32 to 29.

Would a Red Sox deGrom have won 20 games? How about 25? Would he have lost any? Let’s find out. Each of the panels below contains a table showing the dates deGrom pitched, Boston’s opponent on that date, the number of innings deGrom pitched, the projected game score at the point he would have left, the actual performance of Boston’s staff from that point until game’s end, the projected final score and deGrom’s projected record.

March-April

DeGrom made six starts by April 30, but since the Red Sox were not scheduled opposite his April 16 start against Washington – he gave up three runs in six and one-third innings – that start is erased. In the remaining five starts, deGrom went 3-0 for the New York Mets with two no decisions. In one of those no decisions, he allowed four runs in six innings against the Marlins, his worst outing of the season. In the other, he pitched scoreless ball for seven innings before being lifted.

Had deGrom pitched those five games for the Red Sox, these would have been the projected outcomes

Date      Opp.      IP            Score at exit       Pen allows          Final       Decision               Record

3-31       TBR        5.2          3-1                          1                              3-2          Win                        1-0

4-5          TBR        6              0-0                          2                              3-2          ND(W)

4-10       NYY        7.1          14-1                       0                              14-1       Win                        2-0

4-21       Oak        7              0-0                          0                              ?              ?

4-27       TBR        7.1          3-0                          0                              3-0          Win                        3-0

In the actual April 21 game with Oakland, the A’s won 3-0 in nine innings, having scored all three runs against Boston’s starter. But our scenario imagines that deGrom replicated the seven shutout innings he threw for the Mets that day, wiping out those three Oakland runs and creating a 0-0 tie that would have gone into extra innings. That makes the final game outcome unknowable, but either way it’s a no-decision for deGrom.

The April 27 game is also interesting because in the real world Boston lost 4-3 to Tampa Bay. DeGrom, however, pitched 7.1 innings of shutout ball. Had he done that for the Sox, they would have won 3-0. In the April 16 start that is not counted since the Red Sox did not play, he allowed three runs in 7.1 innings, a performance that likely would also have been good enough to win. Were we to count that one in deGrom’s favor, he probably would have concluded the month at 4-0.

May

In deGrom’s five May starts, he went 1-0 for the New York Mets, accepting four no-decisions, all of them in games New York eventually lost. These included two games in which deGrom was lightly used. He left his May 2 start after just four innings, having allowed just two hits and no runs. Rested for 10 days, he returned May 13 but went just one inning against the Phillies, walking three but not allowing any hits or runs.

Obviously had deGrom pitched those games for Boston, they would have remained no-decisions. Here’s the full, if speculative, May record imagining deGrom in a Red Sox uniform:

Date      Opp.      IP            Score at exit       Pen allows          Final       Decision               Record

May 2    KCR        4              3-0                          1                             5-1          ND(W)

May 13 Tor          1              2-0                          3                             5-3          ND(W)

May 18 Bal          7              3-1                          1                             4-2          W                            4-0

May 23 TBR        7              1-0                          0                             4-0          W                            5-0

May 28 Tor          7              8-1                          0                             8-1          W                            6-0

The April 18 game vs. Baltimore is another pickup for the Red Sox. In the real world, they lost 7-4, Sox pitchers allowing six runs in the innings deGrom would have covered. He allowed just one.

In our scenario, deGrom finishes the month at 6-0, two games better than his actual 4-0 record. Coincidentally, the Red Sox have also gained two games in the win column due to deGrom’s presence.

June

The month of June encapsulated deGrom’s season. He made six starts, going 1-4 with one no-decision despite allowing just 13 runs, 11 of them earned. HThe New York Mets gave him 19 runs of support, but 12 of those came in his only victory, a 12-2 decision over Colorado June 18.

The Red Sox, however, were not scheduled on June 18, so that game drops out of our re-creation. Here’s what deGrom’s June record would have looked like had he pitched his other five starts exactly the same for Boston as he did for the Mets:

Date      Opp.      IP            Score at exit       Pen allows          Final       Decision               Record

Jun 2      Hou        7              5-0                          1                              5-1          W                           7-0

Jun 8      CWS       8              0-3                          0                              0-3          L                             7-1

Jun 13   Bal          7              5-1                          0                              5-1          W                            8-1

Jun 23   Sea         6              0-3                          0                              2-3          L                              8-2

Jun 30   NYY        6              7-0                          0                              11-0       W                            9-2

The White Sox did beat Boston on June 8, Dylan Covey (with pen help) out-pitching Chris Sale 1-0. DeGrom allowed the Yankees three runs in a 4-1 defeat that day.

His second defeat would have come at the hands of the Mariners June 23. On that day, Mike Leake shut them out for eight innings, the Sox only breaking through for two runs against Edwin Diaz in the ninth. That wasn’t good enough to avoid a 7-2 loss in the real world, and it also wouldn’t have been good enough had deGrom been on the mound, given that he allowed three runs across six innings that night against the Dodgers.

July

DeGrom’s four July starts for the New York Mets resulted in a pair of losses and a pair of no-decisions. He deserved a better fate, allowing just seven runs (six of them earned) in 31 innings. His Mets teammates, however, responded with just 10 runs of support in those games.

The losses came in the two post-All Star break games against the Padres July 23 and against the Pirates July 28. DeGrom lasted eight innings against San Diego, allowing three runs and accepting a 3-2 defeat. Five night later in Pittsburgh, he went seven, allowing three runs in what would become a 5-0 Mets loss.

The Mets eventually won both of his July no-decisions, 5-1 over Tampa Bay July 6 and 3-0 against Philadelphia July 11.

Here’s how different things would have been if deGrom had been on the mound for Boston instead:

Date      Opp.      IP            Score at exit       Pen allows          Final       Decision               Record

Jul 6       KCR        8              9-1                          1                            10-2       W                            10-2

Jul 11     Tex         8              4-0                          0                              4-0        W                            11-2

Jul 23     Bal         8              5-3                          1                              5-4        W                            12-2

Jul 28     Min        7              6-3                          0                            10-3       W                            13-2

In Boston’s actual July 11 game against Texas, the Red Sox built an early 4-0 lead then staved off an eighth inning Texas rally to win 4-2. Projecting deGrom on the mound, that rally would never have materialized, given his eight five-hit shutout innings that night against the Phillies.

August

August was deGrom’s busiest month. He made six starts for the New York Mets, compiling a 3-2 record with one no-decision. Still it might have been better; his two losses both came by scores of 2-1, as did his Aug. 28 no-decision against the Cubs.

Had deGrom pitched that same month for the Red Sox, he would have lost one of those six starts, since the Red Sox did not play on Aug. 13. That happened to be one of deGrom’s three Mets victories, but it also happened to be his worst performance of the month, an 8-5 decision over the Yankees in which he allowed three runs in 6.2 innings.

Still, the re-creation suggests that had deGrom pitched for the Red Sox instead of the Mets, his Cy Young credentials would have been certified and gold-plated by month’s end. Here’s what would have happened:

Date      Opp.      IP            Score at exit       Pen allows          Final       Decision               Record

Aug. 3   NYY        8             4-2                          0                              4-2          W                            14-2

Aug. 8   Tor          6             7-0                          3                            10-3          W                            15-2

Aug. 18 TBR       9              5-1                          —                             5-1          W                            16-2

Aug. 23 Cle         6              7-2                          0                              7-2          W                            17-2

Aug. 28 Mia        8              7-1                         1                               7-2          W                            18-2

The Aug. 28 outcome is the most questionable. In the real world, the Red Sox led 4-1 when Miami erupted for five runs in the eighth inning against Boston’s bullpen. In Chicago, meanwhile, deGrom was allowing just a single run in eight strong innings of a game his team lost in the ninth. The Red Sox ended up beating Miami 8-7 on a walkoff Marlins error, but the re-creation contends – obviously arguably – that Miami’s eighth inning rally never would have occurred against deGrom.