Jacob deGrom is not just the best pitcher right now in Major League Baseball. He looks like one of the best of all time. Everybody who loves baseball knows how fans look forward to the next start from Shohei Ohtani. And we all should, because what Ohtani is doing -- pitching and hitting -- hasn’t been done since Babe Ruth. But Ohtani just isn’t as good a pitcher as deGrom is. Right now, the Mets ace does what he does better than anybody else in his sport.

And he might be getting better as he goes.

This is what it was like with Sandy Koufax in the 1960s. This is what it was like for Bob Gibson in ‘68, when he finished with an ERA of 1.13. This is all as dazzling as Pedro Martinez was at his best, or the greatest Met of them all, Tom Seaver. deGrom’s ERA, the lowest through May for any starter since 1964, is 0.71. What we are witnessing is an historic combination of power pitching and artistry.

And on top of everything else, deGrom can hit, too. The former college shortstop knocked in another run against the D-backs on Monday night. It means that in a season when he has given up just four earned runs, he has knocked in three. He has nine hits and 20 at-bats for a .450 batting average. He’s not a two-way guy the way Ohtani is, but every time he gets another knock, you feel as if he could be.

deGrom pitched six scoreless innings against the D-backs in the Mets' 6-2 win on Monday. He retired the first 13 batters he faced. He threw 27 pitches at more than 100 mph. Twenty-seven pitches out of a total of 70. Fifty-one pitches out of 70 were thrown for strikes. He has now struck out 82 batters in 51 innings in eight starts this season around time spent on the injured list for soreness in his right side.

deGrom’s lifetime record is 74-53, and because of the excellence we have seen from him over the last several years, he is on a Hall of Fame track even though it might take him this season and next and maybe one more after that to get to 100 career victories.

After he had breezed through the first four innings the way he did on Monday night, deGrom said that of course he was thinking about the possibility of a no-hitter, even having just returned from the IL last week.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t [cross my mind], but we had discussed six innings or 85 pitches,” deGrom said. “I think if I had a perfect game or no-hitter going still, I would’ve wanted to stay out there. But it was something we had discussed, so when I gave up the hit, it did make the decision a little easier.”

The first Arizona hit, by Carson Kelly, didn’t come until the bottom of the fifth. deGrom gave up one more after that and his night in the desert was over. Opponents this season are batting .129 against him. Again, deGrom’s batting average, in limited plate appearances, is more than 300 points higher than that.

Monday night happened to be the eighth straight start for deGrom when he has allowed one earned run or fewer. You know whose record that happens to match? His own, in 2018. There is a reason why the Mets’ great play-by-play voice, Howie Rose, said this of deGrom on Tuesday morning:

“Let’s put it this way. We should all strive to find avenues of improvement in our lives the way he does on a pitcher’s mound. He’s a great pitcher, and there have been plenty of great pitchers over the years, but his arc might well be unprecedented. How is it possible that 18 days from his 33rd birthday he not only throws harder than ever but his command has somehow been even sharper? He’s a perfectionist to the same level that Tom Seaver was cerebral. His strikeout totals rise while he reduces his pitch count? What? Who can possibly do that? That’s not just excellence. That’s the stuff of genius.”

“He’s relentless,” Merrill Kelly, the opposing pitcher on Monday night, said afterward. “It’s every single pitch.”

Forty-seven fastballs against the D-backs. More than half of them over 100 mph. I remember watching him in the spring in West Palm Beach, Fla., against the Astros, watching the grace with which he delivers the ball to home plate, and somehow being surprised, even in the spring, that he was hitting 100 or more in the bottom of the first. There is no better pitching show in the big leagues right now -- not even Ohtani when he is bringing his own heat -- that is comparable to this.

According to our Andrew Simon, deGrom became the first pitcher in the pitch-tracking era, which means since 2008, to average 100 mph or more with his fastball. He was the 272nd player taken in the 2010 Draft. He had Tommy John surgery the same year in Rookie-level ball. This is his seventh full season in the big leagues. And in his second start back from the IL, he dominated the D-backs the way he did.

The good news for the first-place Mets is that he is back. The bad news for everybody else? Jacob deGrom is so back.