UPDATE: ESPN’s Jeff Passan tweeted at 4 p.m. EST that Jacob deGrom would miss Opening Day and be shut down for a month and that the timetable for his return was unclear.
Baseball season is right around the corner, and as is the norm, it’s panic time in Queens.
Jacob deGrom is having shoulder issues, and will miss his spring start, and get an MRI. Which won’t do much for Mets fans’ stomach acids, given that deGrom missed over half of last season with elbow problems.
The gremlins have crawled upwards, it would appear.
According to Jon Heyman, the Mets are still hopeful their two-time Cy Young winner can make his Opening Day start.
It’s odd timing for deGrom, who has already said he’s going to opt out of his contract after the season, though that might be on pause now. One can’t help but notice that deGrom threw 200+ innings before the pandemic season, threw less than 70 that season, and then got hurt last year. Just a theory.
More worrying is that deGrom, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, is 34, and while Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander and one or two others have been able to stay in the absolute pitching aristocracy past that age, the horizon has come up awfully quickly on most everyone else reaching that plateau. The Mets aren’t quite as deGrom-dependent as they’ve been now that Scherzer is stomping around the clubhouse and mound. And Chris Bassit is a pretty solid starter behind that, though it gets questionable after him.
It’s upsetting for all baseball fans, as deGrom was headed to one of the greatest pitching seasons ever before he got hurt last year, going 7-2 with a 1.08 ERA in 15 starts. Late 90’s Pedro stuff. He and we may have missed that opportunity forever now. Or maybe it’s just a blip. Doesn’t feel like one though, does it?
Meet the Mets.