Tom Glavine had a front row seat to one of the greatest four-year runs in baseball history by a starting pitcher, when teammate Greg Maddux won four Cy Young Awards in a row from 1992 to 1995.
But it’s hard to argue that Jacob deGrom isn’t putting together the greatest stretch of dominance the game has ever seen.
“I witnessed Greg’s four-year run in Atlanta when he won four straight Cy Young Awards, and it was very similar to what Jake is doing in the sense that if Greg went out and gave up two runs in a game, you were scratching your head like ‘Oh my God, what just happened?’” Glavine told Tiki and Tierney on Monday. “If you go out there for 35 starts, you’re gonna have a third of your starts where you’ve got it. You just walk out there, put your glove on the mound, and you’re gonna win. Then you’re gonna have a third where you just don’t have it, and then a third in the middle where you’ve gotta figure out how to win those, and those are the ones that shape whether you have a good year or great year.”
Maddux compiled a ridiculous 1.98 ERA with a 2.54 FIP and 7.0 strikeouts per nine innings during that span, but deGrom’s ERA over his past four seasons has been even better at 1.90, while posting a 2.13 FIP and 11.9 strikeouts per nine. The Mets ace allowed two runs over six innings in his last outing, his worst of the season, which is an extreme anomaly like it was for Maddux in the mid-90s.
“Greg in that four-year run never had those bad ones,” Glavine said. “He never had that day where he went out there and just didn’t have it…now you look at Jake and what he’s doing, it’s the same situation, but he’s doing it at a stupid level.”
DeGrom will enter his next start with a 0.69 ERA, and entered his last outing having driven in more runs at the plate than he had allowed on the mound all season. Already with two Cy Youngs to his credit over the past four seasons, and with another locked up if he keeps up his current pace, deGrom is arguably pitching at a higher peak than the game has ever seen.
“It’s hard to argue that he’s not,” Glavine said. [Braves play-by-play announcer] Chip Caray, when we were doing the game, he asked me about this, and with all due respect to Sandy Koufax in that four-year run that he had that many would argue was the greatest four-year run in the history of the game, I didn’t see that.”
In his last four seasons in the majors, Koufax posted a 1.86 ERA with a 1.97 FIP, but deGrom still boasts the higher ERA+ in his four-year stretch. The baseball world will be watching to see if he can carry it through a full season, but right now, it’s hard to say that any pitcher in MLB history has been better than what deGrom is right now.
“That kind of stuff is just stupid,” Glavine said of deGrom’s current stat line. “It’s hard to argue, especially in today’s game and what it is, that a guy can go out and have the dominance that he’s had. I think you absolutely have to include this run that he’s on right now in the conversation with the greatest pitching runs in the game.”
Listen to Glavine's full interview with Tiki and Tierney below!
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