New York Mets: Jacob deGrom’s MVP hope is also injured

The New York Mets may survive ace pitcher Jacob deGrom’s latest visit to the Injury list. But his MVP hope is dying with every day deGrom does not pitch.

As deGrom is sidelined, San Diego Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis is steadily pulling ahead of him in all the measurable indicators that tend to identify an MVP.

New York Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom no longer NL MVP front runner

There is a widely held – and unfair—perception in baseball that pitchers should not be considered for the MVP because they are not full-time players. Even a heavily worked starter may only appear in 33 games these days, far fewer than the 150 or more games played by the best position players.

The standard is unfair because while pitchers play in fewer games, their influence on those games is outsized in comparison with position players. Even the best position player may influence only four or five outcome-related events per game. A good starter such as DeGrom, by contrast, can easily influence six to seven times that many every time he takes the mound.

The data clearly demonstrates this. In 2019, the last full season, 70 position players had at least 600 plate appearances. That’s a good representative number for a full-time player. But 87 pitchers — that’s 17 more — also faced at least 600 batters.

In fact the most involved player in 2019, measured by batter-pitcher confrontations, was Trevor Bauer, who worked through 911 such batter-pitcher matchups.

No position player came to the plate more in 2019 than Marcus Semien’s 747 appearances. A total of 37 pitchers, including deGrom (804), faced at least that many hitters in 2019.

deGrom’s problem is that he isn’t facing any batters while he in on the on the Injury list, while Tatis is. Beyond that, Tatis is holding his own.

At the time of deGrom’s latest injury, the comparison between the two was even enough for the MVP race to be either player’s to win. At that point, deGrom had faced 327 opponents, Tatis 313. deGrom had allowed fractionally more than one-quarter of a base per batter-pitcher confrontation; Tatis’s statistical victories against opposing pitchers were a virtual mirror.

At the time of the injury, the game’s most common comparative yardsticks also saw a close race. deGrom had a 4.4 WAR, Tatis was at 4.3. deGrom had a 3.0 Win Probability Added, Tatis’s WPA was 2.7.

deGrom had a previous IL stint, that coming between May 11 and May 25. He has now appeared in just 15 games this season, none since leaving the first game of a July 7 doubleheader. He cannot return until July 26 at the earliest.

Tatis isn’t waiting for deGrom. Since deGrom’s last pitch, the Padres shortstop has added 32 plate appearances to his own card, with seven hits, three walks, a home run and six RBIs. He has overtaken deGrom in both WAR (4.8 to 4.4) and WPA (3.1 to 3.0.)

And, most importantly, Tatis’s Padres have seven more games scheduled before the earliest deGrom can return. That’s as many as 35 additional windows of opportunity for Tatis to pad his own MVP case, and nothing deGrom can do about it.

By the time deGrom does return, the likelihood is that Tatis will be sitting at close to 370 plate appearances. That would involve him in nearly 50 more batter-pitcher confrontations than deGrom by that point.

That’s a 15 percent opportunity advantage to Tatis, a gap that could only be erased if Tatis is also hurt or goes into a major slump. Neither of those is foreseeable.

And that all assumes deGrom both returns at the earliest possible date AND pitches full-time without injury the remainder of the year.

As noted at the outset, the New York Mets’ divisional title hopes may survive Jacob deGrom’s injury. But deGrom’s own MVP candidacy is now in serious jeopardy.