Jacob deGrom will remain on the injured list for a while longer.
On Tuesday, Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy addressed the obvious elephant in the room — two-time Cy Young winner will see “two or three more weeks” on the sideline rather than the 15-day minimum after suffering from elbow inflammation.
DeGrom, 34, is eligible to return on Sunday in the Rangers’ third game against the Athletics, but Bochy explained that while deGrom is feeling better, he won’t increase his throwing routine until a visit with the team’s physicians after their Seattle road trip.
“After they take a look at it, I can answer a lot better,” Bochy said according to the Dallas Morning News when asked about the tentative plan for deGrom. “It feels better with each day, but you’ve got to go through some tests and evaluate. Once that happens, we can start to ramp up his pitching and hopefully get him on a mound. It’s hard to say, but it’s going to take a little time, maybe two or three weeks.”
In late April, deGrom had two early exits — one against the Yankees on April 28 — where he threw a mere 50 pitches and 3.2 innings through what was described as “forearm tightness” before a trainer and Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux came to the mound to pull him.
An MRI exam later found no structural damage but did show some inflammation.
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He also exited an April 17 start with wrist soreness.
DeGrom is 2-0 with 30.1 innings pitched over six starts with an ERA of 2.67 and 45 strikeouts for the Rangers this season.
Before joining the Rangers in free agency this offseason on a five-year $185 million contract, deGrom was with the Mets for nine seasons since he was drafted by the team in the ninth round of the 2010 MLB June Amateur Draft.
DeGrom, who pitched nine seasons in New York, missed the majority of his final two season with the Mets because of injuries, pitching 15 games and 92 innings in 2021 and 11 games for 64.1 innings in 2022.
In his final year, he didn’t pitch until August due to a stress reaction on his right scapula and the previous year deGrom suffered tightness in his right side and later dealt with a UCL sprain.
