It’s becoming a familiar story: Jacob deGrom pitches magnificently yet the Mets still lose. In this case deGrom himself lost too, with New York falling 2-0 to the Atlanta Braves.
It certainly wasn’t deGrom’s fault. He went seven innings, scattered seven hits and allowed just one run while striking out seven and not walking a batter. His teammates, though, mustered only two hits all game: a shift-aided Michael Conforto infield single that broke up the no-hit bid of Braves starter Mike Soroka in the top of the seventh and a Brandon Nimmo double in the ninth. Apart from a couple of walks on top of that, the Mets were as listless it comes at the plate on the afternoon. Again.
It’s hard to overstate just how impressive deGrom has been this season. By all measures other than the win-loss column, he has been one of the best, if not the best pitchers in baseball. He has a 1.55 ERA, a 1.01 WHIP He has struck out an astounding 113 batters and walked only 23 in 87.1 innings. He has allowed a grand total of six earned runs in his last ten starts. He’s personally only 2-2 in those starts, however, and the Mets have managed to lose eight of those ten games.
It’s likewise hard to find comparable examples of a starting pitcher getting absolutely no help from his teammates, but here’s one little fact that got spit out of the Twitter machine: deGrom is the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 1999 to make five straight starts of seven innings pitched or more and allow two or fewer earned runs whose team has lost each of those games. deGrom has been playing one-on-nine for most of the season and no one is gonna do well under such circumstances.
It’s still a bit early for people to start talking about trade deadline deals, but I’d hope we can make an exception in the case of Jacob deGrom. Not because I think the Mets should trade him for their own good as a franchise, but because it’s getting really hard to watch a guy who deserves so much better get so little.
C’mon, Mets. Trade Jacob deGrom. On humanitarian grounds, if nothing else.
