Baseball can’t have anything nice. Jacob deGrom, who was doing his best impression of Bob Gibson circa 1968 so far this year, had to leave his start yesterday with discomfort in his side. This was just days after he had a start pushed back because of discomfort in his lat. We don’t know if it’s serious, and it might not be, but it’s yet more evidence that the human body can only hurl a baseball that hard for so long.
Looking at the list of starters this year who have the highest fastball velocity on Fangraphs, no less than seven of the top 12 have had major surgery in the past. It’s just the nature of the thing. Teams can only hope it happens when a team isn’t in their contention phase, or when a pitcher is young enough to still put together many productive years after the 12-18 months they’ll miss.
Perhaps it’s just accepted now. It’s not football or hockey where the accepted injury risk is also accompanied by worry about quality of life afterward. Teams maybe just plan for missing their pitchers at some point.
It sucks, but it’s probably the way now.
[UPDATE]: deGrom is heading to the 10-day IL, retroactive to May 10.