Jacob deGrom: Sign or Say Goodbye?
For Mets fans, the 2022 MLB season was bittersweet from day one. Before the season begins, Uncle Steve breaks the bank on a record-setting payroll! But, the season is delayed by one of the worst lockouts in sports history… In March, the lockout finally ends! But, our Ace Jacob deGrom misses Opening Day with a shoulder injury… We steamroll through August, leading the NL East by 10.5 games! Only to go cold in September… We break 100 wins for the first time in over 20 years! But, we fail to win the division thanks to a tiebreaker against our biggest rival… As we head into October with hopes high, we enter the postseason for the first time since 2015! But, we get sent home early with a first round loss…
Blood, sweat, tears — Mets fans have felt it all this season. But the worst may be yet to come. The one thing nobody can prepare you for as a Mets fan: Jacob deGrom is a free agent.
As deGrom opts out of his contract for the 2023 season, there are several key questions being asked in the world of baseball. First off, there’s the question of dollars: how much money is Jacob deGrom worth? The 34-year-old righty has made an average of $27.5 million per year since 2019, but he has been quite vocal about his dissatisfaction. Considering shiny new yearly contracts with Max Scherzer for $43.3 million and Gerrit Cole for $36 million, it’s no surprise deGrom is eyeing the big bucks. The question now becomes how much Steve Cohen and the Mets should pay for the two-time Cy Young award winner.
But, before we get into the nitty gritty, there is a major caveat to any discussion about Jacob deGroms future: is he healthy? Jacob deGrom has been tormented with injuries for the last couple years, reaching a season low of only 11 starts in 2022. This lack of utilization might have the Mets’ front office biting their fingernails and clutching their wallets asking themselves, “Is Jacob deGrom an expensive liability? Or are his skills so utterly dominant we only need 11 starts to get our money’s worth?” To answer these questions, we need to understand his contributions on the field, as well as how much players are paid for such a high level of talent. Let’s take a look!
How Good is Good?
First, let’s get an understanding of exactly how much skill Jacob deGrom brings to the table. For this part of the analysis, I’ll be using two key indicators: Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and Win Probability Added (WPA). Both of these stats are used to estimate a player’s contribution to winning baseball games. WPA is the sum of all the things a player does to affect his team’s win probability, and WAR is an estimate of how many more wins a player’s actions should result in compared to an average player (check out FanGraphs for detailed definitions). They are both ‘counting stats,’ meaning the more games you play, the more WAR or WPA you can accrue. It is important to use counting stats for this analysis since deGrom has, let’s just say, ‘inconsistent’ attendance which drags the sum of his contributions down. Another thing to note, we are comparing Jake’s stats to all starting pitchers who faced at least 100 batters per season between 2019 and 2022.
Looking at the top pitchers in WPA and WAR, we can see that deGrom is, in fact, an Ace. With an season average WPA of 8.88 and WAR of 16.6 since 2019, Jake is among the best of the best, with company such as Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander, and teammate Max Scherzer.
In order to factor his health into our comparison, we need to find Jake’s WPA and WAR on a per-game basis. Then, we take each pitcher’s WPA and WAR and divide them by Jake’s WPA per game, which will tell us how many games Jake would have to play to match that pitchers total success throughout a single season.
Let’s take a second to unpack these numbers. If deGrom only musters his career-low 11 starts next season, he would still achieve about the same WPA and WAR that Kyle Hendricks could be expected to rack up throughout 30 starts (Wow!). It would only take deGrom 16 games to have a WPA equal to a full season of Walker Buehler and a WAR equal to a full season Sonny Gray. If he makes it to 19 games next season, he’ll be as valuable as guys like Alcantara, Woodruff, Castillo. It would take him 23 games to provide the same level of value as he has on-average throughout his career, and if he reaches his single-season high of 32 starts next season he would top Scherzer by a wide margin.
So as we can see, when it comes to winning baseball games, deGrom is an unquestionably strong asset no matter how few games he manages to start. If the Mets pockets were infinitely deep, it would be a no-brainer to keep deGrom despite the injury risk. However, even Steve Cohen runs out of money eventually. So let’s continue our analysis by digging into some salaries.
At What Cost?
Now that we have an idea of the impact deGrom makes on the field, we need to quantify his performance in dollars. The most common way to valueate and compare baseball players’ salaries is to use $/WAR, which is the cost, in dollars, for each Win Above Replacement. We are going to focus on $/WAR, but the results would be similar using WPA. Also, I’m using 2022 salaries for this analysis.
In 2022, deGrom’s contract earned him $35.5 million dollars. If we use his average WAR of 16.6 per season since 2019, our calculation results in $2,138,554 / WAR. To put this into words, the Mets are paying deGrom +$2.1 million for every game he wins more than an average pitcher. Yikes. Take a similar look at a handful of players below:
As to be expected, top talents like Cole, deGrom, and Scherzer come at a high price. Interestingly, Stroman’s $/WAR is higher than all three, but thats another conversation (and a big whoops by the Cubs). In order to factor deGroms availability into these comparisons, we are going to do something similar to what we did earlier with WPA and WAR. First, we are going to multiply Jake’s WAR per game by each player’s $/WAR, which will give us something like a $/game if Jake filled in for their contract. Then we’ll divide Jake’s 2022 salary by this special $/game value for each pitcher, creating an estimate for how many games Jake would have to pitch to match his peers’ $/WAR.
For example, if Jake plays a very small number of games with his high salary, his $/WAR would be astronomical and certainly unaffordable. But if he plays very many games, his WAR would increase (as counting stats do), resulting in a $/WAR that is much lower. He would then be comparable to some budget pitchers who still perform quite well compared to the average. Let’s use this visualization to unpack these numbers a little further and see how many games he’d need to play to compare to his peers:
To reiterate: our y-axis is counting games until Jake is equal with each pitcher. Using his 2022 contract, if Jake only starts 11 games, his $/WAR would be higher than any pitcher in baseball. It would take him more than 18 starts to match Marcus Stroman’s luxurious fee, and if he manages to start 21 games next season, his WARs will be slightly cheaper than Scherzer (but still super expensive). If he starts 23 games, his WAR would cost about the same as it has throughout his career, which would be great news for whatever team owns his contract. If he makes it to his season high of 32, his team’s front office would be overjoyed to know that his Wins Above Replacement came at a huge discount, equal to the average $/WAR that Charlie Morton has earned since 2019.
Unfortunately for deGrom, there are some more daunting numbers on the right side of this chart. For example, it would take deGrom 100 starts in a single season to match the affordability of Brandon Woodruff, and 174 starts to reach a Sandy Alcantara-level bargain! Those guys are two of the best pitchers in the 2022 season, and they are winning games at a much cheaper cost. One look at that and the Mets will be drooling at the mouth!
The scariest part of all is that these calculations were made with his 2022 salary. Considering his next contract could be as high as $44 million dollars, each Win Above Replacement will become even more expensive. It is quite evident that deGrom’s wins come at quite a premium compared to his peers, and we now have an understanding for how many games we need him to play for his contract to become economical. Next year’s salary will make these differences even more drastic, and deGrom will likely need to be extremely healthy to warrant a reasonable cost per WAR.
Verdict: Sign or Say Goodbye?
This analysis started out by taking a look at deGrom’s output on the field compared to his peers. We also got an idea of how many starts it would take deGrom to surpass various pitchers. Then we looked at deGrom’s contract, and put a price on his performance. We counted how many games it would take for deGrom to match the cost of various pitchers, weighing the impact of injury and a higher 2023 salary.
We found that deGrom is, without question, one of the best pitchers in modern baseball. We found that he contributes to his team’s wins as much as any of his peers, and that even with few starts, he contributes as much as quality pitchers like Kyle Hendricks. However, we found that deGrom’s contributions are already very expensive. We found that his 11 starts in 2022 cost the Mets more $/WAR than any other pitcher in the league, and that he’d need to have a very productive season to even be in the price range of the other Aces in the game.
So what do the Mets do? If we had infinite money to spend, it’s clear that deGrom’s is so talented that his history with injuries becomes, frankly, meaningless. With a giant (and I mean enormous) budget, even a small number of games with Jake on the mound would provide more value to a team than the majority of pitchers provide in a whole season. But, considering the Mets’ budget is not infinite, Jake’s 2023 cost is likely to be rather demoralizing, to put it lightly. So many incredibly talented players like Alcantara, Buehler, and Woodroof have $/WAR that look miniscule compared to deGrom’s $/WAR. Considering the Mets have a thriving farm system, a very talented GM in Billy Eppler, and multiple other avenues for acquisition, it seems that finding a cheaper option could be quite easy. And to top it all off, important context within the franchise such as weak offensive production, a complete bullpen rebuild, and multiple other notable free agents like closer Edwin Diaz, it is nearly impossible to justify deGrom’s monstrous price tag.
All things said and done, as much as I hope he stays, I’m not keeping my hopes up that the Mets will renew deGrom’s contract. I certainly don’t see how it would be economically viable unless he took a lower salary for a longer contract, and I’m curious to see what kind of offers he is able to garner from around the league. As a Mets fan, it has been a blessing to watch Jake pitch these last 5 years, and I wish him the best wherever he lands. #LFGM
Written by Jack Werner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-werner/)
Note for the reader: One way to improve this analysis would be to try to predict how many games deGrom will be healthy enough to start. Future work could include a predictive model based on shoulder and elbow injury recovery time. The model could also incorporate age, which has been shown to impact recovery and performance overall. We could then use this prediction to get a better understanding of the expected performance and cost of deGrom.
Thank you to FanGraphs and BaseballReference for sharing the data used in this analysis.
