Jon Gray is on a ridiculous pace according to all the fancy statmakers

DENVER – Trying to figure out Colorado Rockies starter Jon Gray can feel a bit like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube with your feet.

His talent is such that can make even the most seasoned of baseball people shake their heads. His fastball-slider combination, at its best, makes those same hardened baseball people look like smitten, lovesick teenagers. He has added a curveball to the mix that, when it’s working, makes him a terror in cleats. Otherwise, he looks like the lost member of the Beach Boys.

He already has some stupendous highlights to his resume, including a franchise record 16 strikeouts in a game at Coors Field and powering his club to its first postseason appearance in nine years, in 2017.

Now, he’s doing it again.

The first portion of the season showcased everything Gray has been thus far in his career; utterly dominant at times and a total conundrum at others.

His setbacks became so severe that the Rockies felt compelled to send down their opening day starter for two games at Triple-A. Not even the most negative of Jon Gray prognosticators saw that one coming.

But since returning, “The Gray Wolf” has been a different animal.

Using BSN Denver’s own DPR metric, which gives players a bit more credit for what they have actually produced in trying to project for sustainability, we can see that Gray hasn’t been at his absolute best after his moment in the minors – but he has been at his most consistent.

His two best scores actually come from earlier in the year. The outing DPR liked the most was an April 25 game against the San Diego Padres in which he worked six innings while striking out 11 and giving up zero runs on three hits and a walk. That earned him a 95.31 on a scale that goes up to 100 (though can be exceeded with extreme performance) and another game against the Padres—his second start of the season—earned him a 94.09.

But each of his excellent performances early on was followed by dreadful ones, including three separate times in which he failed to reach a 30 on the scale. Probably his most head-scratching sequence came when he put up an 83.71 against the Marlins in one start followed by a 34.62 against the Giants in the game that ended up being the final straw before the demotion.

In the seven games since, he is averaging a 79.15, the low mark coming against the Dodgers with a 54.36 in a game the Rockies ended up winning.

If he could sustain that pace for an entire season, it would be the fourth-best mark in baseball just behind Max Scherzer and ahead of Aaron Nola and Gerrit Cole. Next on the list are Trevor Bauer and some guy named Clayton Kershaw.

That’s right, the Wolf of Blake Street has been on a slightly-better-than-Kershaw pace for almost two months now. Of course, all those guys have put up those numbers over the long haul of the entire season, but this just once again goes to show how good Gray can be when he gets locked in.

We’ve been down this path before, but if Jon Gray has truly figured out how to stay consistent this time, the Colorado Rockies have themselves the elite ace they’ve always dreamed about.