Yes, this appears to be a mildly ridiculous question, but there is some veracity to it being considered. Winning multiple Cy Young Awards is not a Hall of Fame prerequisite. Neither is winning back to back Cy Young Awards. However, winning two does help the argument.
The history of the Cy Young is full of inconsistencies. Closers don’t win very often, and the greatest closer of all time, Mariano Rivera, never won. Up until very recently, winning games was a big part of the argument, despite the fact that it’s been proven over and over again that wins don’t necessarily equate to pitching dominance. Due to this, some pitchers who should have won two or possibly at least three Cy Young’s didn’t because some other pitcher may have won more games than them in that particular season.
When it comes to pitching and the hall of fame, it usually boils down to either short-term dominance or long-term achievement. Take Tom Glavine. Glavine was a very good pitcher and did win two Cy Young Awards, in 1991 and 1998. He has over 300 wins and was a consistent pitcher for many years. It’s hard to categorize Glavine as a dominant pitcher though. He pitched alongside two dominant pitchers, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz and was a pitcher for whom stuff was less important than knowing how to pitch. This isn’t an argument against Glavine being in the Hall of Fame, but more of an example of how some pitchers have gotten in for different reasons.
deGrom isn’t young in terms of baseball standards. He will turn 32 during the season. Hopefully he has another four dominant years in him beyond 2020, but that is impossible to predict. He will not be the type of pitcher for whom longevity is part of the equation when it comes to his ballot.
So, for deGrom, it’s going to be the short-term dominance argument, and that’s where things like Cy Young and Rookie of the Year Awards matter. deGrom is dominant. He has been the best pitcher in the National League for the last two years and one of the top three or four since he came into the league. Based upon his ability to pitch beyond his terrific stuff, he should have a little more longevity than a pitcher like Tim Lincecum, who was dominant for several years and won back to back Cy Young Awards, but wasn’t able to maintain much of a success level when his stuff started to lag.
An interesting comparison is going to be when another former Met, Johana Santana enters the ballot. Santana’s career numbers do not jump out at you. A large part of that are the shoulder issues that ended his prime at the age of 31 in 2010. He only pitched in one more major league season after that, 2012 and hasn’t even pitched a minor league inning since. He also only became a full-time starting pitcher in 2004, at the age of 25, despite having logged over 400 innings of major league work between 2000 and 2003. However, between 2004 and 2008, Santana was arguably the best pitcher in the game. He won two Cy Young Awards in that span, in 2004 and 2006, and easily could have won in 2005 as he was the better pitcher than Bartolo Colon, who won that year (Rivera also has an argument for the ’05 award). He was top five in Cy Young voting in all five of those years. He also led the league in ERA three times, strikeouts three consecutive years, FIP in three consecutive years, innings pitched twice and wins once. When you add in the fact that he was an extremely effective pitcher in 2003, 2009 and 2010, despite injuries (’09 and ’10) and a split role (’03), Santana seems to hit on most categories regarding a Hall of Fame pitcher. Yet professional baseball is full of pitchers who flamed out before the numbers added up (Dwight Gooden for example), so Santana might end up on the outside looking in.
deGrom was Rookie of the Year in 2014 and has one the last two Cy Young Awards. He has led the league in ERA, FIP, ERA+ and strike outs. He has three consecutive 200 plus innings seasons, a rarity in today’s game and in the day of the home run, doesn’t allow all that many of them after one blip on the radar screen in 2017. Yes, he has to put up excellent numbers for the next few years, but let’s hope that the lack of wins (the bi-product of an inconsistent to bad offense and the fact that he’s always going up against the Max Scherzer’s and Clayton Kershaw’s of the world) and the fact that he’s not going to post 3000 strikeouts or have mind boggling long term statistics, doesn’t prohibit one of the best pitchers to ever take the mound in a Mets uniform from not being in Canton. If anyone is going to deserve consideration when the numbers don’t add up, it’s going to be deGrom.
If he has a few more good years he could make it, and if he were to squeeze out a third Cy Young award in amongst those years, that should clinch it.
Interesting thought, and it’s been chatter on the talk shows after he won CY number 2. If you ask about the numbers today – like he stopped playing baseball, I can’t see it. He would get discussion, but this cohort will have Kershaw and Scherzer both of whom do have staggering numbers. He definitely has an important collection of hardware, perhaps even enough already, but he will need a couple years of being in the top mid to make it. I believe he has the potential to make the Hall…but it better be in NY not Ohio!
Yeah missed that during editing. Meant Cooperstown. Ugghhh…
Not yet. Dale Murphy won back to back MVPs. He is not a hall of famer. Jake needs more padding on his resume.
One other point not mentioned here that would be extremely helpful to his cause would be the team making the playoffs and a World Series or two while he is around, and even more so if he pitches well in the post season. I think Sandy Koufax is in the same discussion – not a long career but the best there was for a few years – would he have the same discussion without the World Series appearances?
Love Jake but he would need 5 more really great seasons to be seriously considered, even by today’s revised standards. And yes some WS rings would help the cause. He is the reality that we had hoped for with the Dark Knight. Hopefully we will not look back and see a great pitcher on a mediocre team for his whole career.
Even by today’s revised standards? It’s harder to get in the HOF now – by the traditional writer’s vote – than it’s ever been. You can field a lineup of HOF-eligible guys that would crush a team of guys already elected.
1B – Helton
2B – Kent
3B – Rolen
SS – Vizquel
LF – Bonds
CF – A. Jones
RF – Sheffield/Walker/M.Ramirez
SP – Clemens, Schilling, Pettitte
RP – Wagner
And there are clowns voting for Jeter and no one else.
And those are the more recent guys. . I would certainly add Jim Kaat and Tommy John to your starting rotation.
It’s an easy no for me.
If you are going to use the short term dominance yardstick. you have to be head and shoulders above your competition during that timeframe. In my book, Johan Santana would pass but not deGrom.
From 04 to 08 Santana produced 38.3 RA9-WAR. The next closest was Roy Oswalt at 29.1 That is dominance well above your peers.
If we look at deGrom the last 3 years, his RA9-WAR is 3rd behind Verlander and Scherzer. Unless you think that both will fade considerably the next 2 years and deGrom will produce 2 more Cy youngs, at best deGrom will only finish marginally better than them, and thus deGrom won’t be able to claim a period of time where he was clearly the best pitcher.
As a lifelong Bronxite and Met fan, Jacob has been what a fan like me has been looking for; A homegrown superstar that I can brag about in the realm of Yankee fans. Now I’m looking at this as a baseball fan first, not as a Met fan. Jacob is yet another amazing starting pitcher that has stuff great enough to have a Met team squander away a potential win with their inability to perform to his level of brilliance. He arguably is the best homegrown Met pitcher of this level since Dwight Gooden. This COVID-19 era has thrown a crick into his path towards a Hall Of Fame trajectory, especially being that he’ll be 32 in June and the possibility that there might not be a 2020 season. As of this writing, Jacob isn’t a Hall Of Famer despite his current hardware, can he be one? Yes but it’ll take a couple of more dominant years and perhaps a Met team that can play well behind him.
Jake was always going to be an interesting HOF case, a guy who had to get in based on “peak,” rather than “career” value. You need to be active for 10 years to get into the Hall and currently JDG needs four seasons to make this minimum requirement. If he ages like Scherzer, it will be hard to keep him out. But that’s no easy thing to do.