Jacob deGrom

The New York Mets made the logical decision of shutting down ace Jacob deGrom for the remainder of the season, after the team fell off the race for a playoff spot via the NL East crown or the second Wild Card.

DeGrom hasn’t played in an official MLB game since July 7, when he had to leave his start with right elbow discomfort that was later dubbed as inflammation. However, the team recently admitted that his UCL was partially torn at one point, but that the issue “resolved itself” and surgery was no longer an option at the moment.

The Mets decided to keep deGrom from pitching this year the same day fellow star Noah Syndergaard returned to the mound and looked impressive in an inning of work.

With less than a week remaining in the calendar, and the Mets not playing for anything, they chose not to risk further injury by bringing deGrom to pitch an inning or two before the end of the regular season.

“Everyone is fully on board,” Mets manager Luis Rojas said of the decision, according to MLB.com. “Jake is fully on board. It’s the right thing.”

“He would be fine to pitch, but there’s no sense to it.”

Injuries limited the Mets’ star to less than 100 innings

The Mets could only enjoy 92 innings of deGrom this season (in which he put a historic 1.08 ERA), thanks to several injuries that included right lat, side, back, shoulder, forearm issues, and elbow inflammation in mid-July.

The pitcher threw a successful bullpen on Monday, and could have returned in case of emergency. However, he hadn’t faced live hitters and there is really no point in bringing him back.

“He checked all the boxes for it, but we talked today — and with him too, and everyone — and at this point, there’s no point for him to pitch in a game,” Rojas said. “He’s just going to shut it down for the season and focus on his offseason routine. … He was fine to pitch after the side [session] yesterday, but at this point, it just doesn’t make any sense to have him go out there and compete.”

New York Mets’ ace Jacob deGrom, who has been out since early July and is currently on the 60-day injured list, is finally making some progress after spending weeks throwing from flat ground as he recovers from an elbow injury.

DeGrom has been on the shelf since July 7. At the time, his issue was deemed as right elbow inflammation, but Mets’ president of baseball operations Sandy Alderson recently came clean and explained that he was dealing with a partially torn UCL that resolved itself.

The pitcher himself confirmed the news last week, saying that he feels healthy and ready to ramp up. The Mets badly need his contributions on the MLB, and on Tuesday, he appears to have taken a monumental step forward.

Yesterday, deGrom threw off a mound for the first time since late July. As a reminder, he had started his throwing program that month after landing on the IL on July 7, but a setback forced him to be shut down for a few weeks.

The Mets are hoping his health “cooperates”

The Mets’ official site states the following: “As long as deGrom’s health cooperates, the Mets are committed to getting him back on the mound this season, if for no other reason than to have a baseline for where he’s at heading into the winter. The next week will go a long way toward determining if that will be possible.”

If he can advance quickly to facing live hitters and go on a short rehab assignment soon, then there may be a path for deGrom to return to the Mets in 2021. And while he still has significant hurdles to clear in order to reach his goal, it’s not out of the question that the best pitcher in MLB returns as a reliever to accelerate his timeline.

The Mets are currently 72-74, four games out of the second Wild Card spot in the National League and 5.5 behind the Atlanta Braves in the NL East division.

New York Mets’ star Jacob deGrom talked to reporters on Thursday for the first time in weeks. As you can probably imagine, the health of his elbow and, specifically, his ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) was a hot topic in the conversation.

DeGrom hasn’t pitched since early July with what was deemed at the time as forearm tightness. Then, it evolved to elbow inflammation, until the Mets’ president of baseball operations Sandy Alderson talked a few days ago and referred to it as a “very mild” UCL sprain that “resolved itself”.

During his brief meeting with reporters in Miami on September 9, deGrom said that his right UCL is “perfectly fine.”

“I know what we said, but my ligament is perfectly fine,” he explained, per SNY. “I’ve been throwing. I wouldn’t be throwing if I had a compromised ligament. So that’s the plan to continue to throw and build up.”

The Mets star is running out of time

DeGrom recently advanced to 120 feet in his catch progression, per Mets’ manager Luis Rojas, who added that he should be throwing off the mound soon.

While speaking about the injury, Alderson had stated that “a sprain is the lowest grade partial tear. At this point, the sprain has resolved itself. The elbow, at this point, is perfectly intact based on the MRI and the critical evaluations of our doctors. That’s just the technical term that the doctors have used.”

The pitcher is eligible to return from the injured list on September 13^th, but he won’t be ready by then. A start in late-September is the most realistic scenario at this point.

When deGrom was healthy, the Mets were first in the NL East division by multiple games. Today, New York is third with a 70-70 record, 5.0 games behind the Atlanta Braves for the top spot.

Degrom, the Mets’ ace and quite possibly the best pitcher in the world, has a 1.08 ERA in 92 innings in 2021, with a mind-blowing 0.55 WHIP. Had he stayed healthy, he probably should have won his third Cy Young award.

The New York Mets haven’t had their ace, Jacob deGrom, throw in an MLB game since early July. His absence coincided with a rough patch that saw the Mets give away first place in the NL East division. It’s not easy to replace a starting pitcher with a 1.08 ERA, after all.

At the time, his injury was referred to as right elbow inflammation. After some time passed, a recent MRI showed significant improvement and he was given the green light to begin throwing again. He is currently throwing from flat ground, but won’t graduate to mound work until mid-September, complicating his prospects of returning this year.

However, it turns out the Mets’ star was dealing with more than just ‘inflammation’.

Team president Sandy Alderson said deGrom has been nursing a sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, but as he detailed to the Mets’ official site, it has healed and the ligament is “perfectly intact, based on the MRIs and our clinical evaluations through our doctors.”

The Mets say the issue has resolved itself

Alderson also said that the word sprain was a “technical term … another term for a very mild ligament condition,” and he called deGrom’s injury “a very low-grade thing that has resolved itself.”

The Mets don’t know where deGrom’s elbow issues came from.

“I don’t think we know exactly what has caused the problem, but if you were to look at it generally throughout baseball, I think velocity has something to do with a lot of these injuries,” Alderson said. “Whether it’s true in his case or not, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, I haven’t done all the research. But I suspect there’s a correlation between the velocity that pitchers exhibit today and the rate of injury, which is a concern.”

DeGrom is one of the hardest-throwing pitchers in baseball, clocking up to 101 mph with his four-seam fastball.

Despite the news that his latest MRI showed significant improvement on a recent elbow inflammation diagnosis, New York Mets’ ace Jacob deGrom is not particularly close to making a return to action.

The Mets are currently streaking, winning their last six games and cutting their deficit in the division to just four games. They also got back to .500 on Friday night, taking their record to 67-67.

Yet, they are unlikely to have their ace back for at least a couple more weeks, if not more. Per MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo, when asked Friday where he was at in his road back from right elbow inflammation, the pitcher replied: “I’m in Washington.”

Playful geographical jokes aside (the Mets are currently playing a weekend series in the nation’s capital), there is just not too much certainty about the star’s timeline to return to a major league mound.

The Mets’ star pitcher is improving, but is running out of time

DiComo did explain that a Mets official said that deGrom, despite feeling better, “is likely about 10 days away from advancing to bullpen sessions. He has been throwing off flat ground from 75 feet and must extend that to 120 before making it to the slope of a mound. That process should take deGrom into the third week of September; from there, he must throw multiple bullpen sessions and face live batters before he can even consider appearing in a game for the first time since July 7.”

In other words, the Mets are running out of time to get their star pitcher back. At this point, any realistic scenario of him coming back before the last week of the season is hard to imagine.

The Mets official, therefore, doesn’t expect to see deGrom for anything more than an outing or two near the end of the season. And if he experiences any kind of setback, the team will likely just shut him down, especially if they are out of the hunt by then.

The New York Mets’ season is quickly collapsing, as the team has lost eight of their last ten games and is 61-63 overall. Owner Steve Cohen recently, and publicly, complained about the hitters’ lack of production since the second half started. New York held the first place in the NL East until a couple of weeks ago, but the surging Braves took control of it.

Now, the Mets are a whopping seven games behind Atlanta and two games behind the Philadelphia Phillies. The season went south in a hurry for New York, but they are not mathematically dead yet.

One of the main reasons the Mets have been playing poorly is Jacob deGrom’s absence due to injury. The ace has been dealing with right elbow inflammation, and it’s just his latest physical ailment. He also experienced side issues, forearm tightness, and shoulder soreness.

The Mets still want to send him to the mound in 2021

The Mets’ ace was recently placed on the 60-day injured list, but his return this season is still in play, given that it was a procedural move that doesn’t alter his timeline (he is eligible to return in mid-September and probably won’t be ready by then, if at all.)

Additionally, it was reported that DeGrom’s potential return will likely not be contingent on whether the Mets still have a realistic chance to make the playoffs by that time.

“I think we’ll want to get him out there just to see where he’s at,” acting GM Zack Scott told Mike Puma of The New York Post on Aug. 22. The idea is, if the Mets aren’t in playoffs contention by the time deGrom is ready, to remove a potential question mark for his availability in 2022.

He has been shut down with elbow inflammation for a while, and on August 13, the shutdown was extended for two additional weeks after an MRI showed improvement. He will undergo further imaging in late August.

The 2021 season has been on a downward spiral for the New York Mets for a few weeks now. Owners of a multiple-game lead in the NL East as recently as last month, they started to lose some ground and drop important games, and are currently out of a postseason spot.

The Mets are 60-60 in the NL East, but remain 4.5 games out of the first-place Atlanta Braves as of Thursday afternoon. They have been without their best position player, Francisco Lindor, and their top pitcher, Jacob deGrom, for a while now.

Speaking of deGrom, he is currently, and officially, inside of a two-week shutdown window given to him on August 13. After that, the team would reevaluate him and determine whether or not he would be ready to resume throwing.

The situation, however, is worrisome. According to Pat Ragazzo of SI.com, the Mets are leaning towards shutting down deGrom (right elbow inflammation) for the rest of the season.

A return to action is already difficult, but the Mets are holding out hope for their ace to come back in September and help them overcome their deficit. Per Ragazzo’s source, though, there is about a “99.9%” chance that he won’t pitch again in 2021.

The Mets may not have their ace to save them

The Mets have gone 13-20 since the All-Star break and could completely fall out of contention soon if they don’t pick things up soon.

The Mets do not want to push their prized arm into rushing back, especially since they are on the verge of non-contention, having gone 12-20 since the All-Star break to fall below .500, as well as 4.5 games back in the NL East.

The Mets are reportedly not confident that deGrom’s elbow inflammation will be healed enough to resume throwing by August 27. If that’s the case, he would have run out of time to return this year.

The last time deGrom pitched was on July 7, before the All-Star break. He is currently 7-2 with a 1.08 ERA, 0.55 WHIP and 146 strikeouts in 92 innings (15 starts).

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.

Even though the New York Mets lost 4-3 to the Atlanta Braves on Thursday night, it’s fair to say that Jacob deGrom, their ace, had another dominant start. The bulk of the damage against him came in a three-run first inning.

After that, he settled in, to put it lightly: he finished with the three runs allowed and five hits in seven strong innings, with no walks and 14 strikeouts. He even fanned eight consecutive batters at one point.

“When he got his poise back, he was who we know he is,” Mets manager Luis Rojas said of deGrom, per MLB.com. “Fourteen strikeouts in seven innings. This guy is the best pitcher in the game, no doubt.”

DeGrom had retired 37 straight hitters in the first inning, which is mind-blowing. But the Braves somehow managed to hit a triple, an RBI single, and a two-run homer, courtesy of Austin Riley.

“How did he hit that?!” deGrom asked his catcher James McCann, before slamming his glove into the dugout bench. The Mets’ ace had thrown Riley a fastball off the plate, and he went the other way and knocked it out of the park in impressive fashion.

The Mets’ star warned that first inning would be ‘all they’ll get’, and delivered

But the words deGrom said to his pitching coach Jeremy Hefner would mark the rest of his night: “That’s all they get.” And that’s all they got.

The Mets’ pitcher noticed that the Braves were hunting for his fastball, so he adjusted his strategy and used his secondaries more. It paid off.

Even when he ‘struggles’, he can adjust back and dominate. That’s deGrom.

“You guys know how he is,” Rojas said. “He gets upset when he gives up a run. And it’s not because of this year, because of the numbers that he’s had for the season that are historic. It’s just the way he is. He’s always been like that.”

In total, deGrom earned 27 whiffs, his top output since he had 29 back on April 23.