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In a numbers-driven sport such as baseball, it’s easy to fall into a statistical trap like the one we witnessed last week with Jacob deGrom.
The young right-hander triggered a lot of breath-holding and hand-wringing in his previous spring training starts because the radar gun clocked him in the low ‘90s instead of the 95 fans grew to expect the last couple of seasons.
Had he lost the velocity that makes deGrom deGrom? Heavens, how will he ever survive?
Thankfully, those concerned onlookers were able to begin the process of exhalation during Saturday’s start against the Braves.