Jacob deGrom Is a Litmus Check for Corridor of Fame Voters

Earlier this week, my colleague Jay Jaffe touched a bit on Jacob deGrom and his Corridor of Fame case. Because the world can all the time use extra sentences describing how superior deGrom is, and since I’m fascinated by how his Corridor of Fame case will look to voters someday within the mid-2030s, I made a decision to dig slightly extra into his future candidacy and cheap expectations for what the top of his profession can add to his report. I additionally needed to discover what deGrom’s case means for 2010s/2020s Corridor of Fame beginning pitcher illustration extra broadly.

This has been a priority of mine for some time, and I talked a bit about it final yr within the context of Chris Sale’s marvelous comeback season. This piece has caught with me because it was a type of uncommon articles wherein the act of writing it modified my opinion considerably. Initially, my thought course of was “with a lower than 50% likelihood of ending with 200 wins, Sale in all probability received’t be within the Corridor of Fame, and could also be too borderline for even me.” However then I projected the remainder of the league, and for the primary time ever in ZiPS, not a single pitcher who hadn’t already handed 200 wins was projected to have a 50% likelihood of reaching that milestone. So, maybe Sale ought to get to Cooperstown even when he falls wanting that threshold, as a result of if the writers don’t vote for him on the grounds that he didn’t get to 200 wins, how may we justifiably elect any future beginning pitcher?

After I wrote final yr’s piece, there have been solely 11 pitchers between 100 and 200 wins, a surprisingly tiny quantity. And of these 11, just one is in a greater place to win 200 video games now than he was then: Sonny Grey, who has added 12 wins and is having a reasonably typical season by his requirements. So far as the opposite 10 are involved… Gerrit Cole is out till effectively into 2026 attributable to elbow surgical procedure, and Sale has missed a bunch of time this yr from accidents. Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson have each since retired, Johnny Cueto has all however formally accomplished the identical, and Carlos Carrasco and Dallas Keuchel are within the minors and, for the needs of this train, may as effectively be retired. Wade Miley has one win this season and is presently out with forearm ache in his comeback from Tommy John surgical procedure. Yu Darvish, who didn’t make his season debut till July, has moved solely two wins nearer to 200 in his age-38 season. As a Baltimore native, I’m not psychologically ready to speak about Charlie Morton’s progress.

The excellent news is eight new pitchers have joined the 100-win membership this season, however none of them look to be on a path to 200 wins proper now.

Of those eight, solely Nola tasks with a 50% likelihood to get to even 150 wins. Whereas it’s theoretically doable for a lot of the eight to get to 200 wins, it might require an unusually sturdy late-career surge. In the course of the Wild Card period, solely 10 pitchers have amassed 90 wins after their age-34 season, and nearly all of them had been within the early a part of the period; pitcher workloads have continued to drop, and beginning pitchers get fewer choices than ever.

ZiPS tasks solely 4 different pitchers to have a 50% shot at reaching 150 wins: Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, George Kirby, and Paul Skenes.

Rewind ZiPS a decade, and it gave 17 lively pitchers a 50% likelihood to win 200 video games. 9 finally did hit that milestone, and Cueto, the one member of the opposite eight who remains to be technically lively, isn’t going to do it.

So, let’s run the ZiPS projections for the rest of deGrom’s contract with the Rangers, starting in 2026 and operating via 2028 — assuming Texas picks up his membership possibility for that season. ZiPS was actually frightened about his well being coming into the season, for very apparent causes, and whereas he simply missed his most up-to-date scheduled begin attributable to shoulder fatigue, the harm isn’t believed to be a long-term concern. His projected workloads in future seasons have elevated now that he’s stayed largely wholesome in 2025.

Give deGrom the 21 projected wins for 2026-28 and a pair September wins this yr, and that will get him to 123 for his profession. In his piece, Jay introduced up Sandy Koufax whereas discussing deGrom, and I feel it’s an apt comparability.

Koufax’s peak was extra concentrated and extra impactful in particular person seasons than deGrom’s, however as I stated about Johan Santana when he was on the Corridor of Fame poll, in case your finest years are being talked about in dialog with these of Koufax, you could have been a dynamite pitcher. To me, from a pure dominance perspective, Peak deGrom isn’t that far behind Peak Koufax; actually, the hole isn’t huge sufficient to maintain deGrom out of Cooperstown contemplating just about everybody views Koufax as a no-doubt, inner-circle Corridor of Famer.

In fact, it’s an inauspicious signal for deGrom that I’m utilizing Santana as the opposite not-quite-Koufax comp, on condition that Santana went one-and-done on the poll. However I’m hopeful that point is on deGrom’s facet right here. Santana was knocked off the poll within the 2018 election, and the demographics of BBWAA members who stick round lengthy sufficient to earn a Corridor of Fame vote have modified so much over the past decade. In actual fact, the BBWAA didn’t open up membership to internet-based writers — a gaggle that tends to be extra versed in analytics — till after the 2007 season, and lots of of those stathead members couldn’t vote when Santana was eligible. That will likely be completely different by the point deGrom hits the poll in roughly eight or so years.

By then, it’ll be practically 20 years of writers seeing starter workloads change, and possibly voters may have found out easy methods to account for the truth that the function of a beginning pitcher could be very completely different within the 2020s than it was within the Nineties, not to mention within the days of Previous Hoss Radbourn. The trio of former Cy Younger winners of their 40s — Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Zack Greinke — will seemingly be in Cooperstown by the point deGrom hits the poll. Clayton Kershaw is simply three months older than deGrom, however contemplating the Dodgers icon debuted six years earlier, it feels all however assured that he would be the first of the 2 to retire, that means he may even enter the Corridor earlier than deGrom turns into eligible. If that occurs, Kershaw will likely be the final of his type to be voted in by the writers, setting the stage for a brand new commonplace for starters to make it to Cooperstown. That’s, except Kershaw is to be the last-to-debut Corridor of Fame beginning pitcher.

I can’t think about that would be the case, however it’s true that over the following decade, the BBWAA has some attention-grabbing philosophical inquiries to reply concerning the nature of beginning pitcher greatness. I’m undecided what these solutions will likely be, however I do know that deGrom will likely be instrumental in figuring out them.