The amazing Jacob deGrom, the catchers’ surprise offense, Joely Rodriguez’ four bad stretches

The Mets have 22 games remaining in the regular season, which means we have the possibility of four more starts by Jacob deGrom. After missing most of the year recovering from the injury he suffered in Spring Training, deGrom has been tremendous. In seven starts, he’s 5-1 with a 1.66 ERA. Yet with potentially four starts remaining, it’s not impossible that deGrom could finish with an ERA that could challenge last year’s magnificent 1.08 ERA, which was recorded in 92 IP.

In five of his seven starts this year, deGrom has given up no more than a run, with a total of 31 IP and 3 ER in those outings. If he pitches like that in those potential four starts and has 24 IP and 2 ER, it would bring his season totals to 67.1 IP and 10 ER. That’s not enough to beat last year’s incredible number but a 1.34 follow-up season would be amazing. Bob Gibson followed up his incredible 1.12 ERA in 1968 with a 2.18 mark in 1969.

Everyone should know that they lowered the mound in ’69, making it a relatively easier year in which to score runs. Gibson’s ERA+ went from 258 to 164. Now, a 164 ERA+ is outstanding. But it’s not as good as Max Scherzer has been this year. Scherzer has a 173 ERA+. People are quick to point out all of the extra innings that Gibson pitched. That’s both true and important. So is the fact that Gibson and all of the other pitchers of that era were facing hitters who, quite frankly, were nowhere near as good as what pitchers face regularly today.

deGrom had a 373 ERA+ last year and sits this year with a 237 mark in the category. It will be fun to see if he can end this year with an ERA+ that beats Gibson’s 258 mark in ’68, even if he can’t best the raw 1.12 of that famed season. Assuming deGrom makes four more starts, he’ll also have a combined 26 starts over the 2021-22 seasons, which while still short of a full year by modern standings, will be close enough for us to consider.

An old Brent Musburger line can be applied to deGrom since 2018, where he has a combined 98 games and 624.1 IP with a 1.98 ERA. The Musburger line is: “You are watching what greatness is all about.”

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST – All year long, we’ve been talking about how rotten the Mets’ catchers have been. And it’s not like we’ve been making things up. Backstops for the Mets have a combined .545 OPS in 2022, which ranks 30th, also known as dead last, in MLB. But in the tiny sample of September, the duo of James McCann and Tomas Nido are finally showing some life. Here’s what they’ve done this month:

JM – .400/.526/.533
TN – .286/.267/.429

Combined, they have a .345/.412/.483 line in 34 PA. That .895 OPS is almost impossible to believe. Sure, it has no chance to continue for very much longer. That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate what’s happened these past nine games.

A PEN WITH NO LEFTIES WOULD BE ALL RIGHT – Mets relievers have been pretty good this year, despite the exploits of Joely Rodriguez. The lefty reliever has been on the team all season and has recorded a 5.31 ERA, a 1.598 WHIP and opponents have a .713 OPS against him. If he pitched with his right hand, he would have been ditched awhile back. At this point, the best hope is that he isn’t on the playoff roster.

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, hopefully you are aware that virtually all relievers go thru a stretch of 6-12 games where they simply are no good. Relievers tend to bunch their bad games together. The problem is that Rodriguez hasn’t had just one of these streaks – he’s had four.

4/9 – 4/21: 6 games, 9.64 ERA
5/29 – 6/8: 6 games, 10.80 ERA
7/2 – 7/24: 6 games, 11.57 ERA
8/15 – 9/9: 9 games, 6.48 ERA

Rodriguez had a stretch this year where he was dominant against LHB, where he limited them to just one hit in 21 ABs. Despite that great stretch, overall lefties have a .711 OPS against him this year. It’s drifting from “nothing special” against LHB to “are you sure this is a good idea?” to have him face another team’s lefty hitters.

THE MECHANICS OF ADJUSTMENTS – The 2022 Mets have seen firsthand what a change in mechanics can do for a player. And they’ve seen that with both a hitter and a pitcher this season, as Mark Canha and Seth Lugo made tweaks and have morphed into completely different players.

Canha had a .732 OPS in his first 95 games. Somewhere around this point, he made a change in the batter’s box with how he opened his hips. In his last 24 games, a span of 90 PA, Canha has a .313/.389/.638 line. And before you dismiss this as your garden-variety hot streak, know that he’s doing this with a .299 BABIP. Before the adjustment, he had a .366 OBP and a .366 SLG. He’s now turning on balls and hitting with authority that he didn’t do early on. It’s been wonderful to see.

Lugo made us wonder if he was pitching with an injury early in the season, when he had a 4.80 ERA in his first 16 games. Since then, Lugo has a 2.27 ERA, a 1.175 WHIP and he’s limited opponents to a .594 OPS in 39.2 IP. There was a segment during a game where they talked about the adjustments that Lugo made. Afterwards, Keith Hernandez said the explanation was, “above his pay grade.” Here’s a snippet from a Tim Britton article in The Athletic that discusses the change without going into the details:

But the right-hander has been tinkering with his mechanics with pitching coach Jeremy Hefner of late, and he felt like he’d found the right checkpoints heading into this week — not just to pitch well, but to do it for more than three outs like the vintage version of himself.

“To go out and do it in that situation proves to me that I’m on the right track and I know what I’m doing,” Lugo said. “It’s good to have that confidence, too. It’s a tough situation with the sellout crowd. It gave me a little peace of mind and a little confidence in my pitches.

“It’s not just wishful thinking. It’s there.”

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER – It took another injury but the Mets finally did what many of us were asking for weeks/months when they called up top prospect Mark Vientos to replace Starling Marte on the roster. For whatever reason, the Mets preferred the ability of Deven Marrero to play shortstop and Terrance Gore to pinch run, rather than the RHB of Vientos.

Against lefties in Triple-A this season, Vientos has a .330/.408/.732 line in 130 PA. While no one has any illusions that he’ll reproduce those numbers in the majors, the hope is that he’ll do better than the .152/.196/.217 line that Darin Ruf has produced in 51 PA since being acquired from the Giants.