Mets Season in Review: Jacob deGrom

How He Fared in 2016

Much like his postseason starts the year before, deGrom was fighting his way through many of the games he started in 2016. Watching the Mets closely every season, certain guys just prove to you that when they turn it on, they’re different.

Most of this pitching staff could walk up to the mound and dominate at will. But what we saw from guys like Matt Harvey and deGrom was possibly fatigue. What we saw was possibly caused by an injury, or buildup of injuries.

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In deGrom’s case, he was kept away from the team the first few weeks of the season because of family issues. I don’t care who you are, life and family are more important than anything. So you are not going to have a clear head to do anything when those two things are being disrupted, let alone pitch on the biggest stage in sports.

Even after all of that, deGrom showed his true colors by pitching, and working through it. No matter what, even when he didn’t have his best stuff, he fought and continued to fight, even when we found out he couldn’t pitch anymore because of forearm tightness, which lead to season-ending surgery to repair an ulnar nerve.

After all of that, deGrom still pitched to a 3.04 ERA and 7-8 record through 24 starts. ERA is so much more important to me because rather than a record, it shows you how a pitcher individually did. While a team can blow leads and games, throughout the season we saw that despite deGrom having his highest ERA, it still just cracked the 3-mark. That’s pretty impressive considering everything he dealt with.