New York Mets’ star pitcher Jacob deGrom has been placed, once again, on the 10-day injured list, this time with right forearm tightness that he reported over the weekend but has actually been affecting him for a while.
The issue was first made public on Saturday, when Mets’ manager Luis Rojas considered his ace ‘day to day’. Since that moment, the team decided to shut him down until the tightness completely goes away.
“I’m frustrated,” deGrom told Daniel Guerrero of MLB.com. “I don’t know what else to say. I mean, I guess it probably is good news whenever structurally everything looks good, but you go out there and try to throw a baseball and the forearm just doesn’t feel good. The level of frustration right now is very high.
“You want to be out there trying to help your team win baseball games. I think that’s where the frustration comes from. And then my job is to run out there every fifth day, and I haven’t been able to do that. That’s part of the frustration as well, but then you got to get over it and come up with the best plan to get healthy and hopefully stay out there.”
The Mets ruled out any structural damage
Indeed, the Mets most valuable player underwent an MRI on Saturday that, thankfully, showed no structural damage. Rojas said that deGrom has been feeling the tightness since a pre-All Star game bullpen session.
“This is something that we decided today,” Rojas said. “He still has the tightness in his forearm, so until the tightness is resolved, he’s not going to be able to throw. That’s not going to be tomorrow, so that’s why we’re IL-ing him. Making sure that that’s resolved and then he can throw, and then we can start probably having [him] play catch and go into a progression from what he does to have his start. That’s why we’re doing the move. He’s still tight, still not able to throw, so he’s feeling it.”
The Mets’ pitcher has dealt with several ailments this season, from right side tightness in May, to right flexor tendinitis in June, to a sore right shoulder a few days later.
He has a phenomenal 1.08 ERA for the season, however, and the Mets will miss him dearly if his absence extends to more than a few days.