Mike's Mets - The Crossroads

 

By Mike Steffanos

Whether or not Jacob deGrom elects to return after this season, the Mets' future still looks great.

As I watched the New York Mets drop Saturday's contest in Oakland, the more hopeless the game became, the more my mind drifted to other thoughts. Watching Jacob deGrom struggle brought me back to the early years of my baseball fandom. Specifically, I recalled how it felt watching the great Tom Seaver occasionally toss up a stinker. Actually, that was even tougher because I was a kid and truly worshipped Seaver as a hero. There's nothing tougher than a kid witnessing a hero unmasked as a mere mortal. Hell, I still felt some of that seeing deGrom battered around by a bunch of palookas, and I'm in my 60s now. But that's baseball.

Seeing Jacob deGrom looking vulnerable and quite imperfect was a reminder that he is a human and subject to the same forces that define life for all of us. It also points out that deGrom, who will pitch at age 35 next season, is not a no-brainer for the large contract he will surely receive from the Mets or some other club. And don't get me wrong, I am not reading more into a bad performance than it should merit. Even the greatest baseball players have suffered performances that they would rather forget. But anyone that signs deGrom after this season will fully understand the risk involved.

The risks in signing deGrom start with the risk of injury. I understand that the stress reaction in his scapula this spring was a fluke. Still, thanks to the long rehab from that injury, deGrom has 10 starts this season with only 9 games left to be played. Jake only made 15 starts last year and 12 in the pandemic season. He's made less than 40 starts in the past three seasons. It really remains to be determined just how many starts he's capable of making going forward.

Also, 35 is old for a pitcher, particularly a power pitcher. Sure, there are other great pitchers who have thrived in their late 30s because they've been willing to make changes to their game. The Astros' Justin Verlander and our own Max Scherzer are two examples of that. But they are notable exceptions to the rule. You could make a case for Jake being a good candidate for that — great athlete, didn't pitch a lot as a youngster, only just over 1,300 MLB innings — but the risk is high for a pitcher his age nonetheless.

Age is the one certainty to rob any great athlete of his greatness. Tom Seaver was 32 when the Mets traded him. He had some decent years with the Reds. He won 21 games that season, 7 with the Mets and 14 with the Reds. It was the 5th time in his career he accomplished that, but it was also the last time. Seaver was 108-92 with a 3.49 ERA after that point. He was good, but never again great.

Willie Mays is inarguably one of the greatest ballplayers of all time. His last full year with the Giants was 1971 when he was 40 years old. In 537 PA, Mays slashed .271/.425/.482, good for an OPS+ of 158 in an era still dominated by pitchers. He was still pretty good the following year after being traded to New York, with an OPS+ of 145 over 242 PA with the Mets. But it was still obvious that he was approaching the finish line. Mays was a shadow of the player he once was when he hung it up in 1973. His greatness held off time for quite a while, but time always wins in the end. It will eventually catch up to Verlander and Scherzer, just as surely as it will with Jacob deGrom.

You can't wander through any scattered corner of the internet without coming across rumors that Jacob deGrom will be leaving the Mets for Atlanta, Tampa Bay, or the Texas Rangers. While deGrom has kept his thoughts to himself other than acknowledging that he will opt out, there's no shortage of those willing to prognosticate into that vacuum. They know very well it baits Mets fans to read about deGrom departing at the end of this season.

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