The Mets may have had a miserable season, but the performance of their ace starting pitcher Jacob DeGrom didn’t go unnoticed by baseball writers, who awarded him the National League Cy Young this week.
DeGrom had a record of 10 wins and 9 losses, which are hardly Cy Young-worthy stats. But the rest of his stat line were simply superb. He had an earned run average (ERA) of 1.70, the lowest in Major League Baseball. He gave up less home runs per 9 innings than any other pitcher. His WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) was .91, one of the lowest in the MLB. His Wins Above Replacement (WAR), a stat often sighted in determining a players overall value, was 9.6 — second highest among pitchers. This basically means the Mets would have lost as many as 10 more games if DeGrom was replaced by the average pitcher in the National League — which would have left them with a 67-95 record instead of their 77-85 mark.
The 30-year-old superstar is currently in negotiations with the Mets about extending his contract, which runs through the 2020 season.