Jacob Vegrom is a lacquer must for voters from Hall of Fame

Earlier this week my colleague Jay Jaffe touched a bit Jacob Vegrom And his Hall of Fame case. Because the world can always use more sentences that describe how great Degrom is, and because I am fascinated by how his Hall of Fame case will look at voters somewhere in the mid-20s, I decided to dig a little more in his future candidacy and reasonable expectations for what the end of his career can add to his record. I also wanted to investigate what the Degrom’s case means for the 2010/2020s Hall of Fame starting pitching representation.

This has been a problem of mine for a while and I spoke a bit about it in the context of it last year Chris Sale’The beautiful comeback season. This piece stayed with me because it was one of those rare articles in which the action of writing changed my opinion somewhat. In the beginning my thinking process was “with a chance of less than 50% to end with 200 victories, the sale will probably not be in the Hall of Fame, and it can even be limited to me.” But then I projected the rest of the competition, and for the first time ever in zippers, not a single pitcher who had not yet passed 200 victories, was expected to have a 50% chance to reach that milestone. So maybe the sale should go to Cooperstown, even if he fails to do so with that threshold, because if the writers do not vote for him on the basis of the fact that he has not received 200 victories, how can we choose a future starting pitcher?

When I wrote last year’s piece, there were only 11 pitchers between 100 and 200 victories, a shocking small number. And of those 11, only one is in a better position to win 200 games now than he was then: Sonny Gray, who added 12 victories and has a fairly typical season according to his standards. As for the other 10 … Gerrit Cole was well in 2026 because of the elbow surgery, and the sale missed some time this year due to injuries. Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson have both retired since then, Johnny Cueto has done almost officially the same, and Carlos Carrasco and Dallas Keuchel are in the minors and might as well retire for this exercise. Wade Miley has one victory this season and is currently out with forearm pain in his comeback by Tommy John Surgery. Yu Darvish, who did not make his seasonal debut until July, has brought only two wins closer to 200 in his age-38 season. As a resident of Baltimore, I am not psychologically prepared to talk about Charlie Morton’s progress.

The good news is that eight new pitchers have joined the 100-win club this season, but none of them now seems to be on their way to 200 victories.

Of these eight projects, only NOLA projects with a 50% chance of even getting 150 victories. Although it is theoretically possible for most of the eight to achieve 200 victories, it would require an unusually robust increase in late career. During the Wildcard era, only 10 pitchers achieved 90 victories after their age-34 season, and almost all of them were at the start of the era; Pitcher workload has continued to fall and starting pitchers get fewer decisions than ever.

Zips projects only four other pitchers to have a shot of 50% to reach 150 victories: Shoveled” Garrett -Haken” George KirbyAnd Paul Scenes.

Rewind zippers for a decade and it gave 17 active pitchers a chance of 50% to win 200 games. Nine eventually hit that milestone, and Cueto, the only member of the other eight who is still technically active, it is not going to do.

So let’s carry out the trips projects for the rest of Degrom’s contract with the Rangers, starting in 2026 and through 2028 – assuming that Texas will pick up his club option for that season. Zips was really worried about his health that the season took, for very obvious reasons, and although he just missed his most recent planned start due to shoulder fatigue, the injury is not considered a long -term problem. His projected workload in future seasons have increased now that he usually remained healthy in 2025.

Give Degrom the 21 projected victories for 2026-28 and a few September wins this year, and that brings him to 123 for his career. Jay brought forward in his play Sandy Koufax While discussing Degrom, and I think it is an appropriate comparison.

Koufax’s peak was more concentrated and more impact in individual seasons than those of Degrom, but as I said Johan Santana When he was in the Hall of Fame mood, if your best years are called in conversation with that of Koufax, you must have been a dynamite jug. For me, from a purely dominance perspective, Peak is not Degrom That far behind peak koufax; Certainly, the gap is not wide enough to keep the Degrom from Cooperstown, since almost everyone who regards Koufax as a no-doubt, inner Circle Hall of Famer.

Of course it is an unfavorable sign for Degrom that I use Santana as the other Non-Helemaal-Koufax-Comp, given that Santana was voted for a day on the mood. But I hope the time here is on the Grom’s side. Santana was beaten in the 2018 elections and the demography of BBWAA members who linger long enough to earn a Hall of Fame mood have changed a lot in the past decade. In fact, the BBWAA has not opened the membership for the internet-based writers-a group that tends to be more at home in Analyzes-Tot after the 2007 season, and many of these Staead members could not vote when Santana was eligible. That will be different by the time that Degrom gets the mood within eight years.

By that time it is almost 20 years of writers who change starter workload, and perhaps voters will have discovered how they can explain that the role of a starting pitcher in the 2020s is very different than in the 1990s, let alone in the days of the days of Old Hoss Radbourn. The trio of former Cy Young winners in the forty – Justin Landander, Max Scherzer, and Zack Greinke – will probably be in Cooperstown by the time Degrom gets the mood. Clayton Kershaw is only three months older than DEGROM, but given the Dodgers icon debuted six years earlier, it almost feels that he will be the first of the two to retire, which means that he will also enter the hall before Deggrom is eligible. If that happens, Kershaw will be The last of its kind To be voted by the writers and to set the stage for a new standard for starters to make Cooperstown. That is, unless Kershaw must be the last-Debut Hall of Fame starting pitcher.

I cannot imagine that that will be the case, but it is true that the BBWAA has a number of interesting philosophical questions in the following decade to answer about the nature of starting pitchers. I am not sure what those answers will be, but I do know that Fold will play an important role in determining it.