Jacob deGrom has taken the first small step toward potentially pitching again this season.
For the first time in nearly a month, deGrom played catch on Wednesday afternoon at Citi Field, after the MRI exam he underwent earlier in the day showed enough improvement in his elbow to resume throwing.
Manager Luis Rojas said he did not know the details of the MRI — whether deGrom’s elbow inflammation had completely cleared or just subsided enough to get the green light — but called it “great news.”
“We’ll see where we go from here,” Rojas said before the Mets hosted the Giants. “There’s not a progression mapped out yet for how things are going to keep going. But at least getting to play catch today, that’s great news for us.”
The Mets ace had been shut down for four weeks after previous MRIs showed inflammation in his elbow. He last pitched on July 7, and still faces a sizable progression to build back up. He cannot come off the 60-day injured list until Sept. 13, and almost certainly won’t be back right away once he’s eligible.
But Wednesday’s events offered the first glimmer of hope that deGrom could still make it back before the regular season ends on Oct. 3.
Even if he is able to return, it remains to be seen whether deGrom will be pitching in meaningful games. The Mets entered Wednesday 6 ½ games back of the Braves for first place in the NL East.
“It’ll be huge to have him at the end,” Rojas said. “We gotta start playing better baseball, especially if our offense starts clicking. To see Jake late in the season, probably at a perfect point of the season where we’re closing the gap or facing our division rivals, it would be ideal. But I don’t know a timeline yet with Jake on how things are going to go, starting with today’s clearance of playing catch. It would be huge to have him back.”
DeGrom’s last MRI exam before Wednesday, two weeks ago, showed the inflammation had subsided some, but not enough to give him the green light to begin a throwing program. Acting general manager Zack Scott said Tuesday the Mets needed to see “continued improvement” in Wednesday’s MRI exam in order for deGrom to be cleared.
There are still plenty of hurdles for deGrom to clear as he embarks on a progression that includes extending the distance from which he throws on flat ground to throwing off a mound to facing live hitters to getting into potential rehab games. Any setbacks along the way could threaten to end his season. But the Mets believe it is important to see deGrom pitch again this year as long as he remains healthy.
“There’s value there, even if he never gets in a game, just getting up to that point to see how he responds physically,” Scott said Tuesday, before the MRI. “I think we’ll learn something that’ll help us going forward.”
Before going on the injured list with forearm tightness on July 15, deGrom was in the midst of an historic season. In 15 starts, he had posted a 1.08 ERA with 146 strikeouts in 92 innings, despite battling minor injuries that included lat tightness, side tightness and shoulder soreness, all of which he attributed to swinging the bat.
While the Mets have not been able to identify what led to deGrom’s elbow inflammation, they got the first morsel of good news on him Wednesday in more than a month.
“He’s walking around, he does have a different demeanor,” Rojas said. “You can see him a little more outgoing walking around and having fun with the guys. Before, when he was going through the shutdown, he was a little quieter. You could see there was some frustration. That’s gone now.”
