Fantasy Baseball: 6 Players Who Have Completely Erased Their Fast Starts

Jacob deGrom, SP, New York Mets

The Fast Start

The New York Mets' starting rotation entered 2017 with a lot of unknowns, and Jacob deGrom was part of that group since he was one of the many hurlers in Queens coming off season-ending surgery. It didn't look like he skipped a beat in April, though.

The right-hander went just 1-1 over five starts (31.2 innings of work), but he also produced a 2.84 ERA with advanced metrics that backed it up (3.01 FIP and 2.81 xFIP). And while his 8.6% walk rate was a tad elevated compared to what he'd done previously in his career, he paired it with an eye-popping 34.4% strikeout rate, which was supported by an equally eye-popping 17.8% swinging-strike rate.

The Cold Streak

Of all the Mets' starters returning from surgery last season, it looked like he would be the least of manager Terry Collins' worries, but that wasn't the case. Until a brilliant complete-game effort against the Chicago Cubs on Monday night, he didn't at all look like the dominant version of himself who was toeing the slab every five days in April.

Even with his recent gem included, his numbers since May 1st haven't been spectacular. He's gone 4-2, but he has a 5.29 ERA and 4.67 FIP over his last 49.1 frames. The strikeouts were still there (25.6% rate), but his walk rate has ballooned even further to 10.5%. His ground-ball rate did increase while his fly-ball rate decreased, but his hard-hit rate allowed has jumped from 35.6% (which is already high for him) in April to 36.7% since the calendar flipped to May.

That doesn't seem like a huge difference, but prior to Monday night's stellar performance, it was up at 38.8%.

This is basically just a rough patch for the right-hander, who has put together a solid resume since debuting in 2014. He'll more than likely get back to his usual self soon enough, and that complete-game effort may catapult him in that direction. He just has some work cut out for him to repair those season-long numbers (like his 4.33 ERA), which would've sounded silly after how he pitched in April.