PEORIA, Ariz. — The last two times Drew Pomeranz pitched in a game, he could not bear to do it again.
He had pitched through pain in his career. A lot, in fact. But it reached a point the past two times where it was too much.
The first time, in August 2021, he was too injured. The second time, a year later, he was too healed.
So that's why we haven't seen one of the best relievers in the major leagues pitching for the Padres the past 19 months.
There is still no telling when or whether Pomeranz will be ready. That is not questioning anything about his desire or work to do so. That is simply the reality of what happens when a pitcher doesn't pitch.
Every conversation with a baseball person about Pomeranz begins with "If he's healthy" and ends with something about how he can be a difference maker for the Padres.
Padres manager Bob Melvin has several times this spring referred to Pomeranz as the bullpen's "wild card." It is an apt description. A wild card helps immensely, but it can't be counted on until it's in the hand ready to be played.
Maybe soon, that will be Pomeranz.
He has thrown nine times in the bullpen and is probably a week away from facing hitters for the first time. A short time after that, provided all goes well, the left-hander will begin pitching in Cactus League games.
Pomeranz believes he will be ready for opening day.
"I want it so bad," Pomeranz said recently. "You have no idea. I want it more than anything else — just to pick up where I left off."
That would be good for the Padres.
Over the past three seasons, since signing a four-year, $34 million contract with the Padres, Pomeranz has posted a 1.62 ERA, a 2.75 FIP and has struck out 33.7 percent of the batters he has faced. Those numbers rank third, 22nd and 14th among major league reliever who have thrown at least 40 innings in that span.
The problem is Pomeranz has only pitched in two of those three seasons, and his 44 1/3 innings since the start of 2020 rank 186th among MLB relievers.
Pomeranz missed 10 days in 2020 with a shoulder impingement but was otherwise healthy. He was close to finishing that COVID-shortened season essentially perfect, the three runs he allowed in a meaningless game in the final series being the only ones he yielded in 20 appearances (18 2/3 innings).
Other than more frequent starts and stops, the next season was more of the same. He went on the IL in early May with what was called a shoulder impingement. He was also bothered by recurring pain in his left forearm. He had missed significant time in 2018 due to flexor tendon issues and said it was an off-and-on problem throughout portions of his career.
"I pitched through this specific injury for a lot of times hurt," Pomeranz said. "That's just what you do. And then it got better. I think it just reached the point it was such a chronic thing. … I've injured it and then pitched through it, and it got better. And then there were years it was completely normal and then reinjured it a couple years later, and then rehab it, came back and nothing. It's just one of those things that you deal with enough times, eventually you have to take care of it."
Pomeranz returned form the IL in late June and made 13 appearances over the next six weeks, allowing three runs (two earned) in 12 innings. His strikeouts were down quite a bit, and his fastball velocity was down a little. But there was little to indicate the intense pain he was experiencing.
"I had pain the whole year," he said of a season in which he had a 1.74 ERA and 30 strikeouts over 25 2/3 innings. "But I was still effective."
His last game would be Aug. 10, 2021. After getting two outs in the eighth inning, he motioned for the trainer and former Padres manager Jayce Tingler to come on the field after the seventh straight curveball he threw (because it didn't hurt as bad as throwing a fastball) was hit for a single by the Marlins' Brian Anderson.
"I was dying and I was still trying to get out of that outing," Pomeranz said. "And then I had a guy two strikes. He dinked one, I was like, '(Expletive)! I gotta throw a fastball again.' And that's when I was like, 'I can't do it.' I just couldn't. I had nothing left.
"And that's where we got to the point where I was like, 'I need this thing fixed.' I want to play for a lot more years. I'm not just one of those guys who's like just trying to like get my money and go home. I want to freaking play baseball. It kills me. Sitting there last year, especially, supposed to be back and not back, it was tough. I'm obviously rooting for the team, but I want to contribute."
The blanket recovery given for a recovery from flexor tendon surgery is six to nine months, but Pomeranz is far from the first pitcher to take much longer.
That timeline led to a belief he would return last season.
He tried.
Pomeranz was around the team most of the season, including on many road trips.
His arm still hurt, and he kept throwing.
He finally went out on a rehab assignment in August.
"Last year, it was like, 'I want to come back and maybe I'm not 100 percent, but I'll figure out a way to get it done,'" he recalled. "I wasn't like, 'I need to be 110 percent.' It wasn't like that, because I've pitched at much less than 100 percent and still pitched effectively."
His arm didn't feel great, and he was having difficulty getting outs in a timely fashion. But it was minor leagues, so he was mostly faring well.
"In my head I was still like, 'I'll figure it out,'" he recalled. "A minor-league game is very different than being a in a big-league game. You get the adrenaline (in an MLB game). So I was kind of I was trying to get in shape enough to get through and then hoping that adrenaline would carry me in the big leagues."
But the pain. It kept getting worse, and it didn't subside.
"I was throwing and felt like my (expletive) was ripping off the bone," he said. "But it wasn't. It was just so healed. And it was just super painful. That's what scar tissue does."
A scoreless inning for Triple-A El Paso on Aug. 19 was Pomeranz's last attempt to pitch in '22. The team would not make it official for a couple weeks, but a shutdown at that point essentially meant time had run out on the season.
He ended up having the scar tissue around the flexor, near the elbow, broken up with a needle.
"I had to way too much scar tissue in there," he said. "And it was just super, super painful, pretty much every day. … I had too much healing in there. It was just really thick, which is good but it also has to have a certain laxity for me to not have pain and being able to pitch."
After a winter in which he said he adhered to something akin to his normal throwing progression, he insists he is not that far behind. Pomeranz says he is simply taking it slow in order to "check all the boxes."
He can at least say this for the first time in a long time:
"I feel great."
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
