No one is more upset about Jacob deGrom’s shoulder injury than Jacob deGrom.
“I’m really frustrated,” a dejected-looking deGrom said from the Mets clubhouse in Port St. Lucie on Sunday. “I came into camp feeling really good, felt like my elbow and shoulder were in a good spot, and then to hear (about) the stress reaction in the bone was definitely something I was not expecting.
“So, level of frustration’s really high right now.”
DeGrom was in the middle of another stellar spring, ready to play his final Grapefruit League game and set for his fourth consecutive Opening Day start. On Thursday, he felt tightness in his right shoulder after a round of long toss. The diagnosis went from worrisome to bad.
He was scratched from his Friday spring training start and sent for an MRI, which revealed a “a stress reaction on his scapula that has caused inflammation in the area,” the Mets said.
“I threw my bullpen, I felt good and then I went to play catch and felt a little something in my shoulder,” the Mets ace said. “Honestly, I was expecting to hear ‘take a couple days off and you’ll be ready to go.’ But talking to the doctors about it and it being (a bone injury), they said once it heals, it’s healed and then you’re ready to go.
“We’re asking them how my shoulder looked overall and they said it looks the same from previous MRIs,” deGrom said. “I guess that’s the only plus that came out of this.”
DeGrom also said after playing catch on Thursday, he thought he was just experiencing soreness, which he’s dealt with before. So he was caught off guard when his down time went from possibly some days to weeks.
The Mets shut him down from throwing for up to four weeks. After that, he will be re-evaluated with another MRI. If his bone is healed, he can start working on a buildup plan. For now, he has no idea when he’ll return — but based on the timeline for when he’ll get his next MRI, he likely won’t be able to return until May.
DeGrom said he and the Mets have been trying to figure out how this latest injury came about.
“I felt like I put myself in a good position this offseason to be ready to make 30-plus starts, so I’d be guessing if I said exactly what happened,” deGrom said. “I tossed around short ramp-up, not pitching competitively in, what, 10 months, if you really look at it that way. But that would be a guess.
“The most frustrating part is how good I felt throwing this spring,” he added, “and then for this to pop up, felt like out of nowhere.”
This injury also appeared to be a one-off occurrence, according to conversations deGrom’s had with team doctors. He’s confident once this latest setback is behind him, he’ll be good to go for the rest of the season.
For now, that still leaves the Mets without an Opening Day starter after Max Scherzer was also revealed to be dealing with an injury on Saturday.
Scherzer has been having an issue with his hamstring and is ruled “day-to-day,” GM Billy Eppler reiterated Sunday. Eppler said he “saw (Scherzer) moving around, said he feels all right, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.” He also said he had no active deals in the works to add a starter to the rotation, but that he’s generally “always open to improving our roster wherever I can.”
Scherzer is scheduled to throw a side session on Tuesday and then the Mets will figure out how to move forward, Buck Showalter explained. He said there’s still a possibility Scherzer makes the Opening Day start, but even if he doesn’t, the skipper is not hitting the panic button.
“I’m not gonna put the whole thing in disarray for one spot or even two spots,” Showalter said.
Carlos Carrasco, Taijuan Walker and Chris Bassitt are still scheduled to make their end of the spring starts. And if two spots are open in the rotation when the season starts, Showalter said he would go to pitchers who’ve made big-league starts before, like David Peterson, Tylor Megill and Trevor Williams.
