At his best, when healthy, Jacob deGrom is untouchable. He pitches in a way that defies not just comparison but explanation. He’s one of the small club of pitchers to win back-to-back Cy Young Awards, and he is the only pitcher ever to begin a career with such impressive, jaw-dropping statistics: His first 200 starts yielded a 2.50 ERA and a strikeout rate above 30%. No one else had done that before, and no one else has done it since, because no one else is Jacob deGrom.
But the most important parts of that paragraph were not the numbers or the awards. They were the caveats at the beginning—at his best, when healthy. The last few years of deGrom’s career have leaned heavily on those conditional phrases: Since winning those back-to-back Cy Youngs in 2018 and ’19, he has not finished a season with more than 95 IP, with prolonged stretches of time lost to injury in ’21 (forearm and elbow) and ’22 (shoulder). And the aging curve ahead will not offer any relief: deGrom turned 34 in June.
So: What kind of contract do you give him this winter as a free agent?
The Rangers found their answer—$185 million over five years. (There’s also a conditional option for a sixth year that would bring the total deal to $222 million.) Jeff Passan of ESPN broke the news on Friday evening. The contract is striking: Its average annual value of $37 million is second in MLB only to deGrom’s former Mets teammate Max Scherzer. That’s a reflection of the fact that deGrom’s talent is one of the best investments a team can make. It’s just that his health is also one of the biggest gambles a team can take. And there’s no way to have one without the other.
At his best, when healthy, deGrom is of course worth every bit of that $185 million and more. But… well, you can probably identify the most important part of that sentence.
Brett Davis/USA TODAY Sports
It’s especially interesting that the Rangers were the ones who chose to go in here. On the one hand: deGrom has the ability to make any team better, and there’s no question this is a team that needs to get much, much better. This past season was the Rangers’ sixth consecutive year below .500. (Though it’s worth noting that came with an unusually bad record in one-run games—a number that can suggest poor luck more than anything.)
Their ’22 campaign was especially disappointing considering the splash they made last winter by committing half a billion dollars to infielders Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. When the season did not go according to plan, they fired general manager Jon Daniels and skipper Chris Woodward, and they’ve since replaced the latter with veteran manager Bruce Bochy. There’s young talent in the pipeline. But the Rangers telegraphed an interest in speeding up their timeline with Seager and Semien, and to build on that, big moves are required.
deGrom certainly qualifies as one: There’s no free agent out there who offers more upside. Texas had already been working to bolster its lackluster rotation this offseason—gaining depth in Jake Odorizzi and having a qualifying offer accepted by Martín Pérez—and this is the splashiest addition it could have possibly continued with. It’s a lot of years and a lot of money.
But deGrom’s talent is such that one full, healthy season can be almost invaluable. (Or, to evaluate it very roughly, consider that a win is valued north of $10 million, and deGrom put up 9.5 WAR at his best in 2018. Even in a partial, injury-riddled season like ’21, he still put up 4.4 WAR—worth more than the average annual value of his new deal. Now, that analysis is far from precise, but that’s the ballpark.) A team doesn’t sign any 34-year-old pitcher for five years expecting full health through the end. But if a five-year commitment is what it takes to get the next three years of deGrom, well, it’s easy to see a future where that ends up being more than worth it.
The move is also curious in light of how much ground the Rangers have to cover in the AL West. They’re in a division that has them looking up at the reigning champion Astros, who have wasted no time this winter in strengthening a roster that was already plenty strong; the Mariners, who just broke their playoff drought with the help of a young star; and the Angels, who, despite their long-standing organizational flaws, still feature a pair of generational talents. This is not a situation where one acquisition can make up the difference: There’s a lot to cover. But that means there isn’t much to be gained here by half-measures. If you’re going to go in—you might as well go all the way in.
And there might not be a pitcher who can help the Rangers make up more of that ground than deGrom. There just might not be one who will leave them more uncertain of how much he can actually contribute, either.
