This may be the 10th article you’ve read about Jacob deGrom in the last 12 hours. But he’s been so good he’s deserved every one of them. He’s one pitch away from having not allowed a run in three starts. Even with that gopher ball, he’s got a 0.94 ERA in 19.1 IP. Raise your hand if you saw that coming. I see some liars out there.

Coming into the season, ZiPS forecasted deGrom for a 3.30 ERA and Steamer projected a 3.92 mark for this season. Three games don’t a season make, but this has been going on awhile now for last season’s Rookie of the Year Award winner. In his last 15 games of 2014, deGrom posted a 1.99 ERA with a 4.4 K/9. Additionally, he allowed just 2 HR over 99.1 IP.

Adding his first three games of 2015 to his terrific finish last year, we get deGrom with a 1.82 ERA, a 9.6 K/9, a 1.028 WHIP and he’s allowed just 3 HR in 118.2 IP. How does that compare to some of the best 18-game stretches in Mets history? When including stats from over two seasons, it’s difficult to say you’ve got the very best. Below is a chart of the pitchers who’ve had the best individual seasons in team history and then looking to see the year before and the year after to see if we can make an even better 18-game stretch.

The chart above only includes one stretch for each pitcher. Obviously we could have multiple terrific 18-game stretches for Gooden and Seaver. Also looked at were Mike Hampton, Al Leiter, Bobby Ojeda, Craig Swan and Frank Viola. While all had wonderful 18-game stretches, they failed to match what we see from the nine guys in the chart.

It’s also important to note that while ERA was used as the initial determinant, the run environments were not nearly the same. Santana’s run was in a much more offensive-happy era than Koosman’s. Ideally we would have used ERA+ but when taking parts of two seasons – that would have made the calculations much, much more difficult. Accuracy was traded for expediency. Still, this seems like a reasonable list of the best 18-game stretches in team history and a sub-2.00 ERA is still impressive, even for 1968.

Seaver won Cy Young Awards in ’69, ’73 and ’75 but his pitching in ’71 might have been the best of his career. He finished second that year in Cy Young balloting, despite besting winner Ferguson Jenkins by 53 points in ERA+, having a WHIP .103 points lower and having more strikeouts in fewer innings pitched. For the line in the chart above, we took his final 16 starts in ’71 and the first two in ’72. The NL scored 3.91 runs per game in ’71, where the bulk of Seaver’s run here comes.

Gooden’s run contains nine starts in both ’84 and ’85. Down the stretch in ’84, he went 8-1 with his lone loss coming in a game where he had 8 IP, 1 ER, 0 BB and 16 Ks. He had a 1.07 ERA in this span with 13 BB and 105 Ks in 76 IP. The NL scored 4.06 runs per game in ’84 and 4.07 runs per game in ’85, slightly more than what the league did in Seaver’s run, but in my opinion, not enough to take the top spot in the list.

This exercise was worth doing if for no other reason than to remind everyone how absolutely terrific Santana was down the stretch in ’08, even if looked at in a vacuum and disregarding how everyone around him, especially the bullpen, was falling apart. Seaver and Gooden have the World Series rings with the team, even if they didn’t come in their best stretches. Santana didn’t even have a playoff appearance with the club. But it certainly wasn’t his fault in ’08. That year the NL averaged 4.54 runs per game. In his final 11 starts, he was 7-0 with a 1.90 ERA and lost two wins because of the bullpen.

Those three players form the top tier for best 18-game stretch in team history. Factoring in the run environment, you can make a case for any of them having the best. However, Santana has to be docked a tiny bit for having the fewest innings pitched of the three.

deGrom falls in the next tier, along with Harvey and Dickey. It’s interesting to see how tightly packed these three are in both innings and ERA. That Dickey was able to match the other two, despite noticeably inferior marks in both K/9 and HR allowed is impressive. The NL averaged 4.22 runs per game in 2012, higher than either 2013 (4.00) or 2014 (3.95) meaning Dickey pitched in a tougher environment, too.

Cone, Koosman and Matlack form the third tier. And if it was on an ERA+ basis, ’98 Leiter, with a 2.16 ERA in an era where 4.60 runs were scored, would knock out Koosman, and possibly challenge for the second tier. But we were just talking about how underrated Koosman has been in Mets history last night in the Game Chatter, so it didn’t feel right to do that.

So, while deGrom’s current stretch is clearly not the best in team history, he’s also going up against multiple award winners. It’s no shame to fall short of guys named Seaver, Gooden and Santana. But his pitching has been remarkable and it feels like it hasn’t been properly appreciated. We get caught up in the return of Harvey – rightfully so – but deGrom is a true co-ace and the rest of the National League better get used to it.

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