The Shortstop Who Stayed

Stetson

Jacob deGrom arrived at Stetson University as a shortstop who could not hit. As a freshman he struggled badly enough to get benched, and he came close to quitting baseball entirely. His American Legion coach and teammates talked him through it in long conversations, urging him not to walk away from a Division I opportunity. He stayed.

He moved to the mound as a junior. The Mets took him in the ninth round of the 2010 draft — a $95,000 signing bonus — and Tommy John surgery followed in his first professional season, a partial UCL tear. His major league debut came in May 2014. He won the Jackie Robinson National League Rookie of the Year that season, and then the Cy Young Award in both 2018 and 2019, back-to-back. He was an All-Star five times. He spent nine seasons with the Mets and signed with Texas before 2023. His career record is 105-73, every one of his 272 appearances a start.

Texas

On August 20, 2026, in his fourth season with the Rangers, deGrom recorded his 2,000th career strikeout. He has 2,008 now, with a career ERA of 2.66 and a WHIP of 1.00.

Coaches and teammates at Stetson described him as a humble small-town kid with quiet intensity and what they called freaky athleticism. He was raised in DeLeon Springs, Florida, a rural town with no traffic light, where his father Tony, a former AT&T lineman, built a backyard batting cage. Before college, deGrom starred in both baseball and basketball at Calvary Christian Academy in Ormond Beach, earning MVP honors in each. He grew up hunting, fishing, and riding four-wheelers on family land, and he still lives in the DeLand area with his wife Stacey and their three children.

At 38, deGrom has made 24 starts for Texas this season with 157 strikeouts.

Reporting: The Athletic, Orlando Sentinel, SI Kids, Wikipedia, Baseball-Reference. Career and biographical data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.