Mets ace Jacob deGrom to have another MRI on his right elbow on Wednesday
Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom watches play against the Dodgers during the seventh inning on Saturday at Citi Field. Credit: AP/Noah K. Murray
Wednesday will be Jacob deGrom Day, but not for the usual reasons.
The Mets ace, who was transferred to the 60-day injured list with right elbow inflammation, will undergo yet another MRI to see if he's improved, and if he’ll have a chance to pitch in another game this year, acting general manager Zack Scott said.
The expectation, he said, was that deGrom will have continued to make progress. If that comes to pass – and if deGrom’s elbow gets the OK from Dr. David Altchek – the Mets can begin to consider beginning a throwing program that could potentially have him back on the mound in mid to late September.
Additionally, Scott said that Noah Syndergaard, who threw a touch-and-go Tuesday, could be headed for a rehab assignment in the next week, though the Mets continue to monitor how he feels as he ramps up from his return from Tommy John surgery.
If he’s capable and healthy enough, deGrom, who can’t return any earlier than Sept. 13, still would pitch even if the Mets were out of the playoff race, Scott said. There is no talk of shutting deGrom down, though of course that will all be predicated by his progress and how his body responds to more strenuous activity. A previous MRI showed that some of the swelling in deGrom’s elbow had subsided.
"The whole point of ramping him up is just to see if we can get back to where he needs to be while remaining asymptomatic," Scott said. "I agree that it’s late in the calendar, but I don’t agree it’s necessarily shut down [time]. You shut down a guy because there’s real physical reasons to do that. That may present itself as we start to ramp up, but I think it’s important for us to know, whether he pitches in a big-league game or not, I think it’s important for us to know where he’s at at the end of the season."
DeGrom first landed on the injured list on July 18 with what was then termed elbow tightness, and subsequent tests have not shown damage to his UCL, which he had surgically repaired in 2010. He hasn’t pitched since July 7.
Scott said Wednesday that he was confident that deGrom’s injury won’t require surgery.
"If it was something that required surgery, we wouldn’t even be considering going down this path of ramping up," he said. "There’s no reason to believe that unless something changes when we start ramping him up."
Because of how late it is in the season, it’s possible that some of deGrom’s ramping up will be in-game, much like the Mets chose to do with Carlos Carrasco. It’s still early for those conversations, though, Scott said. But any information they can garner about his health will be valuable, he added.
"We’ll learn about how he’s doing physically" if he’s pitching in games at the end of the year, Scott said. "It’s important for him to be in a good place going into the offseason and that can influence how we set up his offseason plan, what he’s going to do with working out, a throwing program, all those types of things. You learn a lot about the player whenever he’s pitching in competition. There’s value there even if he never gets in a game, just getting him to that point to see where he responds physically. I think we’ll learn something that’ll help us going forward."
As for Syndergaard, the plan is still to use him in relief upon his return – something that will likely amount to a shorter rehab assignment, compared with what he’d have to do to prepare himself for full-length games. Like deGrom, though, his situation is fluid, Scott said.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
