This Isn't the First Time an ERA Leader Had Trouble Winning Ballgames For the Mets

Jacob deGrom has been brilliant in his first dozen starts with the Mets this season.  In 72⅓ innings pitched, the right-hander has struck out 98 batters while walking just 21.  DeGrom is also leading the National League with a scintillating 1.49 ERA.  And yet, despite putting up Cy Young caliber numbers, deGrom has earned just four wins in those 12 starts,

DeGrom's low win count is partly due to the team's non-existent offense when he takes the hill.  But mostly, it's been the club's shoddy bullpen that has turned potential victories into frustrating no-decisions.  And it's not the first time this has happened to a Mets pitcher.

Jacob deGrom, meet Craig Swan.

Decisions, decisions.  DeGrom and Swan don't know anything about that.  (Al Bello/Getty Images, Diamond Images)

Forty years ago, the Mets were coming off an embarrassing 1977 campaign, one in which the team posted its worst record in nearly a decade and traded its franchise player, Tom Seaver, to the Cincinnati Reds.  As a result, Craig Swan, who had never pitched more than 150 innings in his previous five seasons with the Mets, was expected to increase his workload for the 1978 campaign.  He did not disappoint, even if his teammates did when he took the mound.

Swan made 28 starts and one relief appearance in 1978, setting a career high with 207⅓ innings pitched.  The team's new ace held opposing batters to a .219 batting average and .597 OPS, which enabled him to win the National League ERA title - something Seaver had accomplished three times as a Met - with a 2.43 mark.  Yet despite his ability to keep his opponents from crossing the plate, he had difficulty adding wins to his ledger, as Swan finished the season with only nine of them.

As unfortunate as deGrom has been, with four wins and eight no-decisions in his first 12 starts of the 2018 campaign, it was far more frustrating for Swan, who managed just one victory in his first 16 starts in 1978 despite a stellar 2.59 ERA through mid-July.  Like deGrom, Swan was occasionally let down by his offense, as the Mets scored three runs or fewer in ten of those appearances, which included three shutout losses.  But on days when the bats showed up, it was Swan's bullpen that let the team down.  In four of those first 16 starts, Swan left the game with a lead, only to see the relievers cough it up before you could say Grant's Tomb.

Swan pitched five complete games in 1978 (winning four of those five contests), meaning he needed help from his bullpen in 23 of his 28 starts.  In only eight of those 23 starts did he leave the game with the Mets trailing, yet he went 5-5 with 13 no-decisions in those affairs.  Incredibly, Swan allowed two runs or fewer in 19 of his 28 starts, but was saddled with a no-decision in 11 of those 19 games.  And perhaps the most frustrating stat of all for Swan was that he pitched better in games in which he failed to earn a decision.  His ERA in those games was 2.16.

Like Swan forty years before him, Jacob deGrom knows what it's like to be at the top of his game only to see a potential "W" taken away from him.  In three of his eight no-decisions this year, deGrom has left the game in the hands of the bullpen with a lead, only to see it vanish within a matter of minutes.  How ineffective has the bullpen been in deGrom's starts in 2018?  The answer to this question deserves its own paragraph.

DeGrom has allowed 13 runs in his 12 starts.  The bullpen has allowed 35 runs in those starts after deGrom was removed from the game.  Somewhere, Craig Swan is saying, "I know the feeling."

In 1978, Craig Swan went 9-6 with 13 no-decisions.  Forty years later, Jacob deGrom is 4-0 with eight no-decisions in his first 12 starts.  At least they can take comfort in the fact that they both had winning records in the games in which they did earn a decision.  It could be worse.  Just ask another former Met, Nolan Ryan, who went 8-16 in 1987 when he led the National League in ERA as a member of the Houston Astros.

Hold my beer, indeed.

"No-decisions are better than losses." -- Nolan Ryan, probably.  (Focus On Sport/Getty Images, Todd Spoth)

Matt Harvey Could Make History, and Not In a Good Way

Looks like an Unhappy Harvey Day.  (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Matt Harvey's fall from All-Star Game starting pitcher to oft-injured, in-game batting practice pitcher has been well documented.  A year after going 4-10 with a 4.86 ERA and 1.468 WHIP, Harvey has somehow gotten worse.  Much, much worse.  In fact, if he doesn't show any kind of progress in his final few starts, he stands to make Mets history, and it's not the kind of history any pitcher would ever want to be associated with.

In 16 starts this season, Harvey has seen his ERA and WHIP go up to 6.14 and 1.574, respectively.  Should Harvey fail to lower his ERA under 6.00 before the end of the campaign, he would join an exclusive club.  How exclusive would it be?  Let's just say no one has been allowed to enter it yet.

Thanks to the baseball-reference.com Play Index, Pete Schourek and Matt Harvey can be mentioned in the same sentence.

Prior to Harvey's 2017 campaign, Pete Schourek was the Mets pitcher who came closest to posting an ERA north of 6.00 with at least 16 starts.  But Schourek's 5.96 ERA in 1993 was crafted as both a starter and reliever.  In Schourek's eighteen starts, he posted a 5.47 ERA, compared to the embarrassing 7.86 ERA he had in 23 relief appearances for the last Mets team to reach triple digits in losses.

Now if we only consider those Mets hurlers who made all of their appearances in a starting role, the closest one to Harvey is a another former ace whose career in New York was beleaguered by injuries.

What is it with guys named Pete or the Spanish equivalent of Pete and high ERAs?  Is Harvey secretly a Pete in disguise?

Harvey is not the only Mets starter this season to suffer from injuries, poor performance or a combination of the two.  Zack Wheeler had a 5.21 ERA in 17 starts before injuries curtailed his season.  Robert Gsellman is the owner of an unsightly 5.58 ERA in 19 starts and three relief appearances.  And had Steven Matz's season not come to a close after just 13 starts, he'd be in line to join Harvey in the Mile High ERA club (Matz finished the year with a 6.08 ERA).

But as awful as Mets pitchers have been this year, no pitcher in the 56-year history of the franchise who made as many as 16 starts has ever finished a season with an ERA higher than 6.00.  That may change when the curtain falls on the 2017 baseball season in a couple of weeks.  And a former Dark Knight could be facing some dark nights of his own during the off-season as he reflects upon his historically bad campaign.