Rangers Should Worry About Jacob deGrom and His Fastball Problem

Jacob deGrom has built his reputation on his fastball. It is what led him to win two National League Cy Young awards and to become one of the most feared pitchers in baseball.

Even his myriad of injuries in his final years with the Mets, and his Tommy John surgery with the Rangers in 2023, didn’t dampen that reputation. Even as he works to fine-tune off-speed pitches and relies more on his slider, deGrom can still dig deep and find a big fastball when he needs to. He’s averaging 97.1 mph on his four-seamer this season.

But, right now, deGrom can't shed a trend that dogged him at the end of last year. The fastball is still live. But hitters are cashing in more and he and the Rangers need to be concerned about it.

Jacob deGrom’s Fastball Problem

THE HOMETOWN KID 😇

Wade Meckler leaves the yard on the first pitch he sees as a Halo! pic.twitter.com/2LO0jIy8TQ
— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) May 23, 2026

On Monday, deGrom found himself on the wrong end of a fastball that Angels slugger Zach Neto sent out of the park for his ninth home run of the year. Wade Meckler followed later in the inning with a three-run run home run, also on a fastball.

Velocity wasn’t the issue. deGrom’s pitch to Neto was 97.1 mph and his pitch to Meckler was 97.9 mph. It was location. Neto put his bat on a fastball that was dead center in the zone while Meckler pulled a fastball that was right-middle and slightly up from the center of the zone.

In other words, the location was poor. He was pulled after three innings, having allowed six hits and six earned runs.

“It’s missed location,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said to Rangers Sports Network. “Balls were up out and over the heart of the plate and Major League hitters do damage on those pitches. It doesn’t matter who is on the mound. Even a pitcher like Jacob deGrom is going to get hit if those pitches are left out over the middle.”

A check of deGrom’s Statcast page is revealing. The right-hander has allowed 12 home runs this year. Nine have come against that fastball. Only one of the nine pitches was in the lower part of the strike zone. The rest were either dead center — which included four pitches — or up in the zone, but hittable.

He’s giving pitchers inviting fastballs to hit. It’s a problem that has persisted from last season when he was named an All-Star.

While deGrom was named the AL Comeback Player of the Year in his first full season back after Tommy John surgery, he had a home run problem. He gave up 26, the second-most of his career. The career high was 28 in 2017, the year before he won his first Cy Young in 2018. That season he only gave up 10 home runs.

Last year deGrom gave up nine home runs through May and then locked things down. He didn’t allow another home run until July and things accelerated. He gave up six in July, seven in August and four in September. A look at last year’s Statcast page shows that deGrom gave up 16 home runs on his fastball. But he only gave up four in the middle of the zone the entire season. He’s already given up four in that area this season.

He recently gave up four home runs in a game for just the second time in his career. He’s only managed three starts out of 10 in which he hasn’t allowed a home run.

deGrom’s main Statcast page is misleading and revealing. When it comes to percentile rankings it’s red in all the right places and blue in all the right places, except for one — his fastball. His fastball run value is minus-2, which is in the 25th percentile in baseball. For comparison, his fastball run value in his first Cy Youn season was 20 and was in the 98th percentile. Notably, his average four-seam fastball was a mile per hour slower that season than it is now.

The problem isn’t velocity. It’s location. For the Rangers and deGrom, that’s the concern and it’s one that must be addressed now.

Add us as a preferred source on Google