Picture the scene: New York Mets‘ training camp. Jacob deGrom, who threw curveballs only 2.9 percent of the time in 2019, hung one to J.D. Davis in a simulated game back in the start of the month. The slugger hit it out of the park and just like that, the two-time Cy Young award winner says: “THAT’s why I don’t throw it.”
DeGrom has accumulated 16.0 fWAR in the last two seasons. He was clearly the league’s best hurler of 2018 and 2019, and he is still at his peak, at 31 years old. Yet he still has the drive to improve, to get better and add more weapons to his repertoire.