Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 719: Jinxing Jacob deGrom

Episode Date: August 25, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to Amazin’ Avenue’s Jeff Paternostro about Mets player development and the mysterious origins of unexpected ace Jacob deGrom.

Here I am again, perfect time, strings are ringing and words are rhyming. I used to hate the fool in me, but only in the morning, now I tolerate him all day long. Good morning and welcome to episode 719 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com, which I heard mentioned on WGN today by Jim DeShaves. That was nice to hear. What context? Did he run a Play Index on the air?

They made reference to some fact that they had found or that they were hypothesized and they might have found or something like that and said, got to get the play index out for that. True. Yeah. Always, always useful. I'm Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives, along with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben. Hello. And we're joined today by a guest, Jeffrey Paternostro of Amazing Avenue. He is their minor league editor as well as their podcast host. And he is a, you know, an expert on Mets development, the development of future Mets. And so we had him on because we wanted to talk about a Met who developed extremely well, Jacob deGrom, who, when we arranged this interview, was probably the second best pitcher in the

National League this year, or maybe the third best pitcher. One of the three best pitchers in the National League this year. And then he went out and he gave up infinite runs in zero innings, it felt like. Actually, it felt like he was in for a very long time, given that he was allowing infinite runs. But the timing isn't great for that reason. But he's still very good. He's still exceptionally good. And in my opinion, he is not just a good baseball player,

but he is himself a phenomenon because of his career arc. And really, he was just pitching to the future scoreboard. That's true. The Mets scored infinite runs plus nine, so they won. That's exactly right. Yeah, they did. They won 16 to 7 uh and uh his era jumped all the way up to 2.29 his whip jumped all the way up to 0.94 he is still an elite ace level

pitcher a true ace and this is was unthinkable a few years ago and we we had Jeffrey on partly because Jeffrey saw him in AA, et cetera, and didn't think much of him, just as nobody did. I will proudly, not proudly, but I will boldly state that Baseball Perspectives did not even have him in an annual until 2014. So the year that he won Rookie of the Year, last year, was the first time we'd ever mention him in an annual. And he's not a young man. He was 26, which means that he made it basically until his Major League debut without ever getting mentioned in a BP annual, which

if, you know, we write 70 guys per team every year. And so we're having you on to talk about that. Sounds good. I wish I had an explanation. Well, first off, tell me what he was like as a prospect from the time he was drafted on. When would a typical Mets fan have heard of him? When would a extremely tuned in Mets fan have heard of him? And when would an extremely prospect tuned in Mets fan have heard of him, and when would an extremely prospect tuned-in Mets fan have heard of him? And in the latter case, what would have been kind of the one-paragraph summation of what you knew about him? Sure.

He was a ninth-round pick, I believe, out of Stetson in 2010, the last of the Omar Minaya, Tony Barnazard, Rudy Terrasis drafts, most notably the same draft class as Matt Harvey, did not pitch much in that administration, partially because they were fired after that season, partially because he had Tommy John surgery shortly after his professional debut. debut. He popped back up again in 2012 in Savannah and pretty immediately caught the eye of Toby Hyde, who writes for SNY.TV and is also the voice of the Savannah Sand Nats. That's sort of when he first came onto my radar, talking about sort of an extreme prospect guy. And the report there didn't change a ton from Savannah all the way till I saw him for

the first time in AA Binghamton. It was an interesting arm. He was a late convert to pitching. He was a shortstop initially in college. So you get a guy like that, you think, okay, it's a live arm. Maybe you teach him a breaking ball. You get lucky. He ends up in the back end of your bullpen. And it was certainly a live arm. He was in the low 90s for the most part then. Could touch 95, 96 on a good day. Developing slider, developing changeup. And enough command, and especially when you're pitching in low A in that ballpark, historic Grayson Stadium in Savannah is an extreme pitcher's ballpark,

big power rallies. If you can throw a plus major league fastball for strikes, the ballpark will take care of the rest, and the level of competition is not going to do much to it anyway. So he dominated Savannah, pitched pretty well in St. Lucie too. I think he initially got, this would have been the story of his career, I believe he initially got called up to AA Binghamton because Louis Mateo, who at the time was probably a slightly better regarded prospect nationally,

had an arm injury. By the time I saw him that August, and I'll say it was one of those days, one of the four days of the year that we New Englanders can actually legitimately complain about the heat and humidity. But there's only so much you can hand wave that kind of stuff at the AA level. And he pitched through a summer in Savannah. And there was some stuff to like. I mean, he was a prospect for the Mets prospect guys, if not so much

for the national ones. It was 1994 with two different fastballs. He could change eye levels. He could throw them both for strikes. And the slider and the change

would both flash major league quality. It's just one of those things where, you know, it's a guy you'd like to have in your system, backend starter,

maybe a good fastball slider reliever. I thought the slider had the best chance to become a real out pitch at the major league level. But, you know, you see guys like that. They're sort of guys that are 11 to 15 on most team prospect lists. I think that's probably where I had him.

11? Coming into that season and after that season. Yeah. And that's about when I think he first sort of gets on Mets fans' radars. After 2013? Yeah, after 2013. So we'll talk – He got into the upper minors.

2013. So we'll talk. He got into the upper minors. Once you sort of get into, into double a, you're getting into sort of the only one phone, one phone call away kind of thing. And, you know, Harvey was up, Wheeler had just come up, you know, Mets fans will start to look for the, for the next wave of pitching prospects. I think he was certainly in there. So we'll talk about what he's like now, but I'm just curious. A couple weeks ago, I heard an announcer with one of the all-time great bad comps. He said that this guy really reminded him of Bronson Arroyo.

It's the hair. It's absolutely the hair. He's long and lean, too. It's completely 100% so obviously the hair. They're nothing alike at this point in their career. Was there ever a point, though, where he was anything like Bronson Arroyo? Was there...

Would you have put a comp on him who would have been... Was he even worth comping at that point? I'm not a big comp guy. I hate to do this because you're going to immediately say it's the hair when I give this comment.

But sort of like Jeff Samarja as a reliever. As soon as you said that, I knew you were going to say that. And even after he came up in the majors, before he sort of broke out in the second half of 2014, you could have seen him going that route as well. Again, it's sort of a late-pitching convert kind of thing, though Samarja, of course, pitched in college. It wasn't his main focus, I guess I'll put it that way. But yeah, it's sort of a live fastball, big arm, strong kid, very loose arm action, and you just hope he sort of develops a breaking ball. So when did you start to believe, and why did you start to believe? Was it a matter of the stuff that you said flashed various things at times just always looking like those things? Or was it that he exceeded even the flashes, that his normal became better than the flash?

It took a while for me because of sort of what I had seen in the minors. I was maybe a little slower to come around. When he was called up, he was called up at the same time as Rafael Montero, who was regarded by myself and pretty much everyone that writes about prospects, whether Mets prospects or nationally, as the better pitching prospect. And the expectation was that DeGrom would take a couple turns through the rotation. I can't remember. They were both hurt during that season. I can't remember if it was Dylan G or John Neese. It was down with a minor back oblique type thing.

But they also had moved Henry Mejia to the pen, so there was one permanent rotation spot. And that was expected to go to Rafael Montero. But in the short term, deGrom outperformed him. So Monteiro ended up going back to AAA instead of DeGrom. And then DeGrom had pitched like a quality major league starter, if not the ace he would become. And then really the second half of 2014, if you look at it, pretty much the same as what he's given you this year. So if you look at sort of those last 365-day stats, he comes out as one of the best pitchers in baseball,

if not the best pitcher in baseball, depending on what metric you want to look at. But even coming into this season, it was one of those things where you look at it and you're like, well, even if you knew nothing else about this guy and his sort of background as a prospect, you would think, I mean, he's got to regress, right? That's how this stuff works.

It's the second season. He's gone around the league once now. You get your advanced reports out on him. But everything's gotten better for him this season on a stuff and command level. And I think I started to see it in spring training this year,

and that's when I really bought in. I actually did an interview with AM New York, which is one of the free magazines or newspapers you get on the subway for a season preview type thing. I miss AM New York. That's a fine publication. And they asked me the standard season preview

stuff. They were like, well, who's a pitcher and a position player to keep an eye on this year a potential like breakout guy and i said you know i think jacob degrom is going to be one of the 20 best pitchers in baseball like i didn't really know what i was going to say until it came out of my mouth i'm kind of glad it did um because i guess it makes me look pretty good for all that's worth for all the uh subway riders in new York. We're actually paying attention to that. But I think that's the point where it's like,

it's like, okay, this is something real now. And if you look at sort of what he's done this year, I mean, we all know sort of the research that Bill Petty and I think others have done, velocity peaks early. You know, he's 27 now, so we'd expect his velocity to stabilize, if not maybe go down a little bit from where it was in the minors when he was younger. I know the Tommy John surgery makes that a little more complicated, but if you look at the Brooks baseball numbers, his fastball velocity has gone a full mile an hour up this season. He's actually gained two to three on all

his secondaries, which I don't think we really think about all the time in terms of how much tougher, how much better it makes off-speed stuff, but less reaction time is less reaction time. He's throwing a 90-mile-an-hour slider now, sort of the Warthin slider that Eno Saris has written about as well as others. You just don't see that. To predict it, you'll see a guy, I'll take another Mets prospect, made good example, someone like Jairus Familia. Like you could see him becoming what he did in the minors. Okay, he figured out his mechanics and the slider got a lot better.

That happens. That happens all over baseball. Noah Syndergaard, his command got better. Now he's got a two-steamer that gives hitters a little different look, gives them a little more fastball movement. This is all stuff you can project. DeGrom basically improved all four of his pitches that I saw in AA, and he didn't even have a curveball then.

He added it after his AAA promotion, and that's become a pitch that gets swings and misses in the majors. And you said that he gained a mile on his fastball since last year, but if we're just talking about from two or three years ago, he's gained like four-ish. Yeah, we'll say. He's like a 91-94 guy. So let's say he averaged 92 to 93, and now he's at 95-plus.

So yeah. Okay, explain it. So he'll tell you that Dan Worthen gave him a mechanical tweak in interviews. I think he's striding a little further. There's a little more leg drive there now from some reports I've gotten. But it's – stuff like this I think defies analysis in a lot of ways, whether it's sabermetric or scouting. I just think it's kind of cool.

And I'm, I'm happy to be wrong about this. Like I'm, I'm one of those guys that'll fully admit when I'm wrong about any prospect really. And you're wrong all the time, but it's not just because, you know, it's like, this is the team I ostensibly root for. And it's now all of a sudden got one of the best pitchers in baseball out of nowhere. But I think it's good that there's completely inexplicable stuff like this. We'll probably never know the answer. It seems like when we talk about the unpredictability of prospects or the challenge of prospecting

and prospect writing and scouting, it seems like we usually focus on the other way. We think about the Brandon Woods of the world who are can't miss, and yet we know half of those guys miss. And if you go even slightly lower, your hit rate is much worse. But this is an example of a guy that I imagine nobody saw really anything. It seemed impossible that Brandon Wood could fail, but we all knew it was possible. You would have that conversation. You could even write the story of how he was going to fail.

But this guy is like one of a thousand guys who are essentially indistinguishable from each other. And I just don't think you could have gotten anybody to even entertain the idea that he would turn into an ace. And kind of the weird thing, and I don't know how creeped out I should be by this, turn into an ace. And kind of the weird thing, and I don't know how creeped out I should be by this, but the other guy who comes to mind as similar, like the two biggest freak show stories

of pitching success in the last few years, is Corey Kluber, who went to the same school at the same time. Yeah, I mean, maybe there's, you know, it's probably more of a weird correlation coincidence thing than anything else. But maybe the Stetson pitching coach is a secret guru that we just don't know about.

Or the opposite. He's the opposite. I see the argument. So he was actually – something in his methodology was keeping this natural talent from surfacing. Yeah, probably. That's probably the most likely explanation. We've slandered the Stetson pitching coach. We've accomplished that much. But you're right.

It's easy to – when you're doing this sort of like post hoc analysis, it's easier to figure out why a guy busted. It's a lot harder to figure out. And the Mets have seen this to a certain extent as well with Matt Harvey in recent years. So I think Harvey is his own, you know, just the pedigree in the background was so different. And he got better at the major league level. But he wasn't, you know, you could kind of see it in the minors. Like maybe you wrote him up as like a number two, number three, and he turned into an ace.

That happens. Sure. It's nice when it happens. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. This was a guy that made his major league debut at 26. My name has been 25. Turned 26 his first season in the majors. And within a couple months of his debut, was pitching like a bona fide ace.

And I don't think we understand aces well either of this type. Because it's not... Like, this stuff's good. It's very good. He has five major league quality pitches, if you want to split out the two-seamer and the four-seamer. But it's not obvious if you just watch the highlights, I guess is the best way to put it. It's not Justin Berlander, or I guess Chris Sale gets it in a different way, or Matt Harvey. It's command and movement movement and he commands all five

of his pitches well though it's funny i'm like saying all this after he made probably what was the worst professional start of his career but when he's on it it's he can command all five of his pitches they're all good pitches He can throw them in different counts. And some days when it's really good, he'll just throw mostly fastballs. He'll just change eye levels. He'll elevate. He'll spot the two-seamer away to righties and lefties,

backdoor, frontdoor, and he doesn't really need much else. And this was a guy that, again, was, I think you put it best, there's a hundred guys like him right now in in double a and in advanced a double a triple a you know guys that will pitch in the majors in some capacity you know maybe back end starter maybe up and down middle reliever the good the good outcomes maybe a high-end setup or even a guy that closes for a couple years. But to have all the things that need to happen to be a number one pitcher in the majors,

basically, slightly over two years ago, he probably wouldn't have shown you any of them. At a certain point, it's... He's been so good. And it's one of those things where people aren't going to buy in because a lot of it's like he commands everything so well. And it's just not something that's going to

flash. It's not Chris Sale's slider. It's not Kershaw's curve. Not that those guys don't have great command either, but when it's almost all fastball command, that's sort of the carrying tool. Yeah, it took forever for Cueto to get an appropriate reputation. Right, I think that's actually a better comp than anything I came up with. I'm annoyed about that now.

He's got funky hair too. But yeah, he's kind of out pitching his peripherals but not and again it's not a long it's not like cueto level track record yet where i can say that's meaningful one way or the other it could just be a random blip you know he's got like a 240 babbitt or whatever but who knows and he hasn't been like so the funny thing is i didn't really touch on his reputation that he was big two seamer guy everyone thought he'd be a big ground ball pitcher in the majors and he actually got a lot of groundballs in Vegas, which is unusual. But that hasn't really shown up either. He's really a completely different pitcher in a lot of ways than what he was in the minors, beyond just the stuff improvements.

I think had had a comparable level of success in his previous two years. And similarly, out of nowhere, similarly difficult to explain. And we, as I recall, Ben, we drafted... Guys we would want instead of Dickie, who would prefer to Dickie the following season. Yeah, we took all the guys in some certain range and then asked who we would take, Dickey or that guy. And I think at the time we both at the end of that exercise were a little surprised by how pessimistic we were because he just won the Cy Young Award. He was a huge trade target.

He was great. And there was even kind of a little bit of an explanation for how it had happened so it didn't feel not replicable. And yet we were surprised by how pessimistic we were and we ended up being way too optimistic about him. So I'm just curious, how many pitchers currently in the majors do you think you would take over to Grom in the next, over the next say, I mean you can pick your time period, you could pick over the next

probably three years is what I was going to suggest, but if you want to say for a start this October that would be fine with me too, pick your time period and then tell me where he ranks Well I think for pitchers it's always good to sort of limit it to two years just because pitchers are so volatile and there's always the risk of

injury and once you go past out that, that's why every time you're giving – I see like a free agent extension. Or I should say a free agent extension, an extension for a guy under contract that won't be a free agent for two, three years on the line for even a top-level starting pitcher. I get a little nervous. So let's say for the next two years.

We'll say for 16 and 17. My list would probably be Kershaw and Sale. There's another five or six guys that's probably in the same general tier that I would

make arguments for depending on the day of the week. But yeah, I really, I guess there's no zealot like the convert. So third, third best pitcher in baseball. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think what you'll see like in a, in a theoretical, I mean, it's unlikely to happen, but in a theoretical one game wildcard playoff if the Mets were in that or if they had one game, they end up tied with the Nationals. In a one-game playoff, assuming both were available on normal-ish rest, I think I would start DeGrom over Matt Harvey.

And I think the team probably would too. Politics aside, I mean you've got gotta sort of manage the locker room there too but i think on a on merit i think it's probably de grom how many uh this is for both of you and i'll give an answer to but if you pulled the average bp fan graphs reader how many guys do you think the average reader educated reader would name would name before DeGrom today? Well, it's probably a dramatically different answer than pulling the average fan. Oh, sure.

It's going to be a much lower number. There are many fewer starters that the average BP fan graphs reader would take over DeGrom than your average baseball fan. The average baseball fan probably takes Jake Peavy over him. Maybe, but I would say it would be higher than Jeff's number,

but lower than... Are we talking one start or are we talking two years down the road? Let's say one start, two years down the road. Yeah, I would say it's probably going to be around 10. Yeah, I was thinking somewhere 12 to 16. I was thinking around 15 to 20.

So you would say that he's still crazy underrated? I think so. Again, I think part of it's he pitches in the same rotation as Matt Harvey and has pitched in the same rotation previously as Zach Wheeler. Noah Syndergaard's up now. Steven Matz.

It's a little difficult to stand out among the Mets' young starters. I think he had a bit of a coming-out party in the All-Star game, obviously. A very impressive one-inning performance there on sort of a national stage, which got him some attention. But he has all the tools in his bag to be good for a number of years. And again, with pitchers, it's always, you just never know. But the fact that he has five different pitches that he can command, if one or two of them aren't working on a given night,

he can still sort of get through a game. When four out of the five of them aren't working like they were tonight, he threw a few good change-ups. That's less good. But you see the results. But I do think he's going to finish, finish even after the blowup against the Phillies. He's, you know, assuming we, you know, Greinke will probably win the Cy Young, but he'll be in the next couple of places along with Kershaw and Scherzer, probably Garrett Cole.

He'll be top five in the Cy Young voting this year. So I think that will sort of move him into some more national prominence. He's a guy that could certainly make more All-Star games, more top five Cy Youngs in the coming years. It's going to be an interesting next few years for him because the funny thing is he was one of the few arms, and really I guess players generally that the the eldest in front office hasn't seemed particularly concerned about in terms of like

super two stuff um you know harvey and wheeler were both kept down until they would clearly not be super two um syndigard this year wasn't as big an issue because he already spent a full year in triple a so i guess you could argue they got the extra year through that. Matz was down until Super 2. Deadline passed, but DeGrom they just sort of called up because they needed an extra arm and weren't really concerned. He sort of

pitched his way into the rotation and he might end up making more than any of them in arbitration. But he'll be like an older free agent too since he's already 27. I wonder if the Mets maybe look to try to lock him up long term this offseason. And I don't know what that looks like. I guess Kluber is the only real comp there from a sort of age performance standpoint. I'm reading an article from the Las Vegas Review review journal in april 2014 about how de grom

spent the whole 2013 season suffering from the after effects of breaking a finger while helping a neighbor castrate a calf yeah somebody was holding the back legs and i was holding the front their hand slipped and it kicked me i looked down and my finger was facing sideways it didn't feel too good i wish this was his non-pitching hand. I know. I wish this were the origin story. I wish it were like a Mordecai three-finger Brown sort of thing where he was trying to castrate a calf and his finger got bent sideways and suddenly he could put all this new spin on balls. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Although it might be part of the case of why he was underrated coming into 2014 because he says he was dealing with the injury and he wasn't able to wear a glove and it was putting him off for most of the season and he was still adjusting to it last April. So maybe it's part of why we didn't see him coming. I mean, if you do want a little bit of sort of a magical explanation, there is the story that while he was on rehab, Johan Santana showed him, Jacob deGrom, his change-up grip in sand lifting. Yes, yes. And that made his fastball. That made every other pitch take a grade-plus jump. So if you ran a website that put out projections and you knew that your projection for deGrom was going to be,

that put out projections and you knew that your projection for DeGrom was going to be at least it was going to seem to the public and to you way pessimistic for the next few years because it has a long list. Hypothetically. Hypothetically if you ran

this website named after, you know, who knows. So what would you do if you were me? What is the appropriate thing to do about a player like this? Well, I mean, you would say that he defies projection systems, and maybe the projection system would say, aha, let me name 10 guys who failed, like Ari Dickey. What is your take when next year's Pocota comes out,

and it's probably going to be like a 3.7 ERA for him? Well, the problem is with any of these projection systems, for guys that don't have a ton of major league service time, you still are a little bit reliant on past performance. And his minor league performance was not good. league performance was not good. For guys that come into the majors as pitchers and are immediately very good major league pitchers, you would assume they

were pretty good minor league pitchers because the majors are harder than the minors. So if you look at someone like even Garrett Cole who sort of, well the Pirates have their own thing where you work on stuff. This may be not sort of getting the peripheral numbers that will light up a Pocota projection, but maybe someone like David Price when he first came up.

Or even guys like Kershaw and Lincecum were dominant minor league starters. I think you're sort of hemmed in by the nature of the projection system and sort of what the data demands. It's just he was an average AA starter and an average-ish AAA starter, maybe a little bit better in AAA once you account for Vegas and the PCL. But there's nothing, you're limited by what it looks at. And the stuff it looks at is, I guess at this point, wrong. So last thing for me, do you put this one in the Mets win column or do you just credit it to the randomness of the

universe? Because obviously the, you know, all this wave of young pitching that they have now brought to the majors, I think it's safe to say that they have moved past the generation K comps. They have had similar injuries, many of them, whether it's DeGrom or Wheeler or Harvey all with Tommy John surgeries or mats more recently they've had the injuries but they've also gotten to the majors and pitched at a higher level there than the generation k guys did for the most part so do we counterbalance the things that the negative things that people say about the mets that they don't spend or that they're bad at diagnosing injuries or at least representing injuries when they talk to the media.

Do you use this as something on the other side of the ledger, that they are good at developing talent, or is it too soon to say? Well, I think you have to put DeGrom in a context, and if it was just sort of a once-in-a-generation kind of thing, you know, that happens. There's weird hits all over baseball you know guys you wouldn't expect to be great major league players turn into great major league players it's not something you want to bet on happening as a general overarching player

development scheme but you know he's come up at the same time or within a few years of all these other good pitchers that have taken, not just that they've become good major league pitchers, they've taken steps forward at the major league level, if not to the same extent that DeGrom has. I've talked a little bit here and there with Paul DePedest about their sort of philosophy in terms of drafting and development. They don't really think, at least they say to me, that they're particularly good at developing pitchers to the point where that's something they would seek out in the draft over other things.

They sort of, from the indications I've gotten, sort of take it year by year, look at the strengths and weaknesses of the class, and just sort of go from there. They're not necessarily looking for the next Jacob deGrom, I guess, which would probably be a fool's errand anyway. On our podcast, I got an email, I think, last offseason, sort of asking me to predict who the next Jacob deGrom is. And I'm like, no, you can't do that. I'm sorry. But I think development is important. Drafting is very important. You have to get talent into your system. You have to get talent into your system. You have to be able to identify guys with potential major league tools. Absolutely.

But it's just not that simple. It's not just a matter of picking the right guy and then you sprinkle a little water on them. And three years later, they turn into whatever they would have turned into normally because you identified that talent. And that talent was sort of a – there was going to be a linear progression no matter what organization they were in, no matter what coaches they dealt with. Development's important. And I think the player development system has to get a certain amount of credit. And Jacob deGrom has to get a certain amount of credit.

We always think of development as sort of going from the organization to the player. But the player has to be receptive. He has to be able to make adjustments. When he's out there, he's out there. All the coaches he has worked with, all the players he's played with and maybe learned from. It's just him on the mound. And he's, for whatever reason, again, I don't think we'll ever know it. For whatever reason, again, I don't think we'll ever know it,

he's that one-in-a-million guy, or maybe that's a bit extreme, but that sort of long-shot guy that's turned into a top-line Major League starter. And I don't think players get enough credit for their own development throughout the whole process. I bet one in a million is a bit much, but I wouldn't be surprised. But if he hit his 99.99th percentile Pocota projection,

that wouldn't surprise me. If somebody told me that's what his 99.99th percentile projection was, I'd believe it. My last question for you is if you could go back and tell yourself two years ago to give this, give that report

another shot before you submit it, would you change anything? I don't think so. I really don't. You just can't, like I said earlier, there are things you can project. You see a guy who's 6'4", 170 pounds, and 19 years old throwing 89-91.

Okay, maybe there's some more velocity there. Maybe that guy's flashing a good slider. I mean, that guy's probably 18. Jacob deGrom was 24-25 and in AA. And those guys do turn into major league arms. And I'm actually pretty happy with my report because I thought he would pitch in the majors. I thought he would be a major league contributor of some sort. You can only write what you see is what it comes down to, I think.

Once you get into that sort of, well, if he takes a great jump here and a great jump there and a great jump there, and his command improves, and he develops a fifth pitch I haven't seen yet, and he can get major league hitters couple of times, I happened to miss him when I saw Savannah that year. You get more of a track record on him, more of a book. You can see what he does start to start, where he's improved. If he's improved, he's got more feel now. Maybe he can get a little bit more. The velocity is a little more consistent in the upper end of his range. Maybe he sits there at the Major League level. there's little things you can hang your hat on that when you get one look you're you're at the mercy of the look and like i said the weather wasn't great but again you know it's you're gonna be playing august games in atlanta when it's going

to be worse you can't really give a guy a pass for that once he gets to double a at that point it's like can you help me in the majors? Are you a major league contributor? And I thought he would be. I just didn't think he would be. I guess the third best pitcher in baseball is what I'm going with. Well, now that the Mets have morphed into a team that scores 49 runs in four games and hits eight homers in a single game, maybe they don't even need Jacob Grom to be one of the best pitchers in baseball anymore. But he has been, and it's been fun to watch. And it's been fun to jinx him and talk about him with you.

Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. And you can find Jeff's writing at amazonavenue.com, where he covers Mets minor leaguers. He hosts Amazonavenue Audio, and he tweets at Jeff Paternostro. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. Rate, review, and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com and support our sponsor The Play Index at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code PP when you do to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. And if you're in Northern California

and you've been meaning to come see the Stompers, our last home series starts tonight, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So if you want to come see us, this is your last chance. If you are really good at baseball and can be activated immediately, even better. But if you just want to watch from the stands, do that too and let us know you're around so we can say hi we will be back soon

good luck with the uh jacob degrom going forward