Mets starter Jacob deGrom is a great pitcher. This has been the case pretty much since his promotion to the bigs in 2014. This season, he's having his career year at age 30. 

Through 22 starts, deGrom has 173 strikeouts in 146 1/3 innings. He's only walked 30 guys unintentionally and given up eight home runs. He's holding opponents to a paltry .205/.257/.301 line and has a 0.97 WHIP. The 6.5 WAR is already a career high by over a win. 

Most impressive would be deGrom's run prevention, which is the top job of pitchers. He has an MLB-best 1.85 ERA, flanked by a 204 ERA+ and 2.28 FIP. 

If deGrom keeps this up, he's in rarefied air. Previously, only 36 times in the expansion era has a pitcher who qualified for the ERA title posted a sub-2.00 ERA (list here on Baseball-reference). 

Something is peculiar when it comes to deGrom, too, and we all know it by now: wins. 

Lack thereof, that is. 

Of those 36 seasons mentioned above, here are the pitchers with fewer than 15 wins:

  • Roger Clemens, 2005 Astros, 13-8, 1.87 ERA
  • Joe Horlen, 1964 White Sox, 13-9, 1.88 ERA
  • Gary Peters, 1966 White Sox, 12-10, 1.98 ERA
  • Nolan Ryan, 1981 Astros, 11-5, 1.69 ERA
  • Phil Niekro, 1967 Braves, 11-5, 1.87 ERA
  • Bobby Bolin, 1968 Giants, 10-5, 1.99 ERA
  • Tommy John, 1968 White Sox, 10-5, 1.98 ERA

One thing you might notice is that -- despite having lowish win totals for such awesome run prevention -- every pitcher there has a winning record. 

DeGrom ... does not. He's 5-7 and on pace to go 7-10 this season. 

Through this lens, deGrom is having the best season ever for a pitcher getting the least help. 

This isn't some lecture about how silly it is to judge pitchers solely on W-L record, because I feel like that battle has long since been won. There surely isn't some idiot out there who truly believes that, say, Mike Minor (8-6, 4.53) is a better pitcher than deGrom this season. 

Instead, this is just a discussion based in how much an outlier, historically, deGrom is. That's interesting, no? 

How did he get here? Again, this is amazingly interesting. Just look at some of these: 

  • April 21: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 10 K, 2 BB, no decision, team loss
  • May 23: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 8 K, 2 BB, no decision, team loss
  • May 28: 7 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 8 K, 3 BB, no decision, team loss
  • June 2: 7 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 13 K, 2 BB, no decision, team loss
  • June 8: 8 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 8 K, 2 BB, loss
  • June 13: 7 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 7 K, 0 BB, loss
  • July 6: 8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 8 K, 1 BB, no decision, team win
  • July 11: 8 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 7 K, 1 BB, no decision, team win
  • July 23: 8 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 10 K, 2 BB, loss
  • Aug. 3: 8 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 9 K, 1 BB, loss

In those games listed, deGrom allowed only 10 earned runs in 75 innings. That's a 1.20 ERA in a sampling of games in which he was 0-4. His team went 2-8 despite him pitching like Bob Gibson with a non-raised mound. 

It's simply remarkable. 

For the love of all that is holy, someone get Mr. deGrom some help.