Jacob deGrom's Hall of Fame Case Gets More Compelling After Milestone

Nobody in baseball history has ever pitched better with less reward than Jacob deGrom.

So, of course, it took deGrom four tries to get his 100th career win, which was achieved after the Texas Rangers slogged their way to a 2-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Monday night. The Rangers needed four pitchers to get the last 12 outs following deGrom's exit, and the Cardinals had the tying run at the plate in each of their final 10 plate appearances.

Like the ancient proverb goes: You can take the pitcher out of the New York Mets, but you can't take the New York Mets out of the pitcher.

But you know what you can do now? Start making a Hall of Fame case for Jacob deGrom, no worse than the second-most dominant pitcher of his generation.

Why Isn't Jacob deGrom A Hall of Famer?

Well, first of all, he's still an active player.

And rare is it to open a potential defense of someone's Hall of Fame case by explaining some of the factors not in his favor. But this is also the first time anyone has ever pondered if a starting pitcher with exactly 100 wins - tied for 635th all-time - at almost age 38 is Hall of Fame-worthy.

DeGrom is just two-thirds of the way to Dizzy Dean (150 wins), who has the fewest wins of any full-time starter who spent his entire career in the major leagues. Dean also has the fewest innings (1,967 1/3) of any majors-only Hall of Fame starter - and by a whopping 357 innings over Sandy Koufax, which means deGrom (1,604 1/3 innings) exceeding Dean's workload wouldn't necessarily serve as a tiebreaker for an uncertain voter.

Last winter's encouraging second-year surge for Felix Hernandez and ballot debut for Cole Hamels was good news for deGrom, because it provided ample evidence that the Hall of Fame electorate won't hold future starting pitchers on the ballot to the standards set by previous Hall of Fame starting pitchers.

Or even the next four starters likely to get elected. Everyone knows the active Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer and the recently retired Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke are the last of a breed and nobody will ever again approach their 200-plus wins or 2,800-plus innings.

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But barring deGrom pitching well into his 40s, he's not going to come close to the counting totals accumulated by Hernandez (169 wins, 2,792 2/3 innings) and Hamels (163 wins, 2,698 innings). Two of deGrom's peers as Cooperstown-caliber starting pitchers, Chris Sale (153 wins, 2,151 innings) and Gerrit Cole (154 wins, 1,972 innings) are also well ahead of him in those categories.

Chances are deGrom will not approach 150 wins or 2,000 innings. Yet just becoming the 16th active pitcher with 100 wins magnified deGrom's elevated status amongst his peers.

The 11 pitchers ahead of Cole - i.e., everyone in between deGrom and the quartet of Verlander, Scherzer, Cole, and Sale - have combined to post a 3.86 ERA over 20,271 2/3 career innings.

DeGrom has a 2.61 ERA. That means he could allow 223 earned runs before recording his next out before his ERA climbs to 3.86. (That would not help his Hall of Fame case. At all.)

Being better than most active pitchers with 100 wins isn't by itself a checkmark in favor of deGrom's Hall of Fame candidacy. But being TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE EARNED RUNS BETTER than most of his peers in the 100-win club? That underlines the unicorn nature of deGrom's case, one that should grow more compelling even if deGrom is done building the bulk of his resume.

Why Is Jacob deGrom a Hall of Famer?

As noted, deGrom does not have the body of work of his peers or predecessors. But he is no worse than the second-most dominant pitcher of his generation and one of the most dominant pitchers of the last 30-plus years.

Amongst starting pitchers who have thrown at least 1,000 innings since 1994, deGrom's 2.61 ERA ranks second, just behind Kershaw (2.53). The only other pitchers with a sub-3.00 ERA since 1994 are Sale (2.98) and Pedro Martinez (2.94), the latter of whom began his career in 1992.

(Fun fact: The ERA leader amongst pitchers with at least 1,000 innings since 1994 is Mariano Rivera, who fashioned a 2.21 ERA over 1,283 2/3 innings, all but 50 of which were in relief. And that, kids, is how you become the lone unanimous Hall of Famer)

DeGrom also ranks first with a 0.99 WHIP and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5.39 and is tied for first with Kershaw in fewest hits allowed per nine innings (6.9). His 2.0 walks per nine innings rank behind only Hall of Famers Greg Maddux and Roy Halladay and would-be-a-Hall-of-Famer-if-not-for-all-that-other-stuff Curt Schilling.

DeGrom may also have authorized the last stretch of durable 200-inning dominance from 2017 through 2019, when he posted a 2.53 ERA and 1.02 WHIP while winning his consecutive Cy Youngs in 2018 and 2019.

He was one of four pitchers to throw at least 200 innings every season from 2017 through 2019 along with the Hall of Fame-bound Verlander and Greinke and Cole. The only pitcher with three straight 200-inning seasons since is the San Francisco Giants' Logan Webb, who posted a 3.31 ERA and a 1.18 WHIP from 2023 through 2025 - good, but not transcendent.

Koufax's career-ending five-year run from 1962 through 1966 - when he went 111-34 with a 1.95 ERA, a 0.93 WHIP and 1,444 strikeouts in 1,377 innings while accumulating 40.7 of his 53.1 career WAR - is the standard for a brief burst of brilliance superseding a lack of volume.

DeGrom's similar run lasted barely half as long and consisted of 755 fewer innings. But it might be the closest thing to a Koufax-ian run any of us will ever see again.

Is Jacob deGrom a Hall of Famer?

I cast my first Hall of Fame vote last December and spend just about every waking moment thinking of Cooperstown hypotheses such as this one. And given how old deGrom was when he debuted in 2014 (just shy of his 26th birthday) and the vast chunks of time he's missed due to injuries and the pandemic before undergoing a second Tommy John surgery in 2023, I thought his case was closed when he underwent a second Tommy John surgery in June 2023.

But as you may have surmised by the previous eight paragraphs, I think the door is ajar.

I do believe deGrom has more work to do to get into the Hall of Fame. It's fun to assume he'd already be in the Sale/Cole class if he'd been able to make 30 starts a season every year since 2015, or if the Mets could have ever supported him and gotten him closer to 150 wins than 100. DeGrom allowed one run or fewer over at least six innings and didn't get the win 33 times in his nine seasons with the Mets, six more than anyone else. But Hall of Fame cases can't be built on assumptions or retroactive hypotheticals.

Yet deGrom is also close to passing the Justice Potter portion of the programming. As any friendly lawyer can tell you, Potter Stewart is the former Supreme Court justice who declared in 1964 he couldn't identify obscenity, but "…I know it when I see it."

DeGrom is without a doubt the best and most intriguing pitcher I've ever seen on a regular basis. He came out of just about nowhere, a shaggy-haired borderline prospect with an easy grin, and morphed into a closely shorn, glowering picture of unprecedented dominance testing the limits of the human arm while also showing a Natural-esque ability in other facets of the game. His effort against the Washington Nationals on Apr. 23, 2021 - when deGrom had as many hits as a batter (two) as he surrendered while striking out 15 -is the greatest baseball feat I've witnessed.

DeGrom - as inscrutable as Verlander, Cole and especially Scherzer are expressive - has been content to let his pitching (and hitting) do the talking, which only enhances the mystery and the belief we're witnessing something historic.

He could use another Cy Young or an iconic moment like a no-hitter or perfect game to craft a case like Johan Santana, who finished with 139 wins, a 3.20 ERA, two Cy Youngs and one no-hitter. Santana fell off the ballot after one year in 2018 - just eight years ago, but before the acknowledgment that the Hall of Fame standard for modern starting pitchers would become drastically different.

Those goals will be harder to achieve if deGrom is on the downside, at least by his peak standards, in terms of both effectiveness and workload. He's compiled a 3.48 ERA while averaging 5.4 innings per start this season. The ERA would be his highest since 2017, when deGrom posted a career-high 3.53 ERA while averaging 6.5 innings per start.

If deGrom continues pitching right around a 3.50 ERA the rest of this season and maintains that pace - 63 earned runs allowed over 162 innings - for four more full seasons, he'll end his career with a 2.89 ERA over 2,349 2/3 innings.

Between deGrom's age and the impending lockout threatening to wipe out much or all of next season, there's a lot that can go wrong with this projection. But becoming the most accomplished pitcher to reach exactly 100 wins is a reminder deGrom doesn't need everything to go right in order to become the most unique Hall of Famer of all-time.

Related: Ten New York Mets alums who belong in the team Hall of Fame

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This story was originally published June 7, 2026 at 7:50 AM.