SAN DIEGO — What gets lost in the moment as we debate the dollars and whether they make sense on Jacob deGrom’s new contract is just what a pleasure it was to watch him pitch in New York.
Every five days — in those times when he was not on an injured list and actually performed every fifth day — deGrom was a genius. He was the starting Mariano Rivera. Athletic. Competitive. Precise. With brevity in pitch selection. Most outings, deGrom could overwhelm with just fastball and slider — albeit a smoothly delivered 100 mph fastball and 93 with the slider.
He was “can’t miss” at his best because you could believe from the outset that he might throw a perfect game or whiff 20 or go on a strikeout streak that would unfold one inning after another. To love baseball is to love possibility, and with a baseball in his hand, deGrom was possibility.
Because of that he is, what, the fourth-best Met ever behind Tom Seaver, Mike Piazza and David Wright? Do you want to put him behind Dwight Gooden? In front of Piazza or Wright? Whatever your individual choice, deGrom is on that short list. And if you care about the Mets or just baseball in the city, there is a feeling of loss that deGrom will not just play here. The last member of the greatest rotation that never was — deGrom, Matt Harvey, Steven Matz, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler — is now gone; and with it goes the possibility that he would be the greatest Met to play just for the franchise.
Because ultimately this was going to come down to dollars and what made sense. The dollars (five years at $185 million with the potential for it to grow to $222 million over six years) were going to be too much for even Steve Cohen’s tolerance, and common wisdom — if not common sense — had become that deGrom wanted out of New York.
Remember what deGrom said last spring training when he announced he would be opting out of his $30.5 million 2023 option: “I’ve said it before: Love being a Met and it would be really cool to be one for my entire career. The plan is to [not] exercise that option and then be in constant contact in the off-season with the Mets and Steve Cohen.”
But the Mets learned not long before the rest of the baseball world that deGrom was gone. They never received a chance to counter the Rangers’ proposal. And what would that have even been to convince deGrom to stay? Texas has no state income tax. To merely match this in actual dollars received, the Mets would have had to far exceed the Rangers’ offer.
There was certainly no signs of a hometown discount, except for something nearer his actual hometown. Rays officials were left with the impression that to be in Florida, deGrom might take less. But even a discount on $185 million over five years for a pitcher with greatness but dubious health did not have a Ray of hope.
That deGrom was willing to sign without seeing what Cohen’s last and final bid would be perhaps means the Rangers put strictures in that this was a take-it-or-leave-it proposal not to be shopped or else it would go away. But deGrom, never a chatty or bold personality like, say, Max Scherzer, also seemed to grow even more detached from New York over time.
There was a feeling from the moment deGrom proclaimed his opt-out intentions that heading south would appeal to him. It is not the distance. Dallas and Queens are about equidistant from DeLand, Fla. This is about environment. DeGrom’s warm-up music — Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” — was telling us a lot about the pitcher before each of his starts.
“And be a simple kind of man
Oh, be something you love and understand.”
However, the lyrics also include:
“Forget your lust for the rich man’s gold
All that you need is in your soul.”
How quaint it seems now that as deGrom’s non-starts mounted in 2022, there was wonder if he would regret promising to opt out. The Rangers ultimately have promised him six-plus times more than the opt out. The $37 million annual average for now (until Aaron Judge and probably Justin Verlander sign) is the second-largest ever to Scherzer. DeGrom joins one of the six teams never to win a World Series and one without a winning record since 2016; the Rangers have won fewer than 43 percent of their games since then.
He will not be the Lone Star, since the Rangers invested a half-a-billion dollars on Corey Seager and Marcus Semien last offseason and potentially have Al Leiter’s son, Jack, and former Mets first-round pick Kumar Rocker coming.
In the end, the team that knew him best was not going to do what an organization far more desperate for relevance did. Because with all the genius deGrom delivered in New York — and it was genius — it had become in recent years with the proviso: “when healthy.” For the Mets, the proviso made the dollars too much to make sense.