New Texas Rangers ace Jacob deGrom just hit his first speed bump of the year on Wednesday.
His general manager, Chris Young, told the media that the star pitcher felt “a little tightness” in his left side during his bullpen session from a couple days earlier.
Temperatures and poor field conditions made the Rangers hold deGrom back for a couple of days.
As Young explained, the decision is just precautionary and the club might have felt differently if the weather was better.
They say his availability for Opening Day is not in question, as shared on MLB.com
“I think it’s as much about it being Day 1 of Spring Training. I don’t think it’s specific to him. We do the same with any pitcher or any player that comes in. If this were a little hamstring tightness today on anybody else, we would treat it the same way. It’s cold, it’s wet. He’s been throwing — it’s been great. His arm feels great. But we’re playing for [Opening Day] and the big picture here.”
With that clarification in mind, it’s hard not to look at the bigger picture here: Rangers fans just got their first warning about what the deGrom experience might be.
He is, when healthy, one of the premier pitchers in baseball and quite likely the best of them all.
He has easy 100-mph velocity and a wide array of effective breaking pitches.
However, he has pitched a grand total of 156.1 innings over the last two seasons.
He has suffered elbow, shoulder, lat, oblique, and other injuries in the process.
Upon reading the deGrom news, fans on Twitter showed that they were definitely not surprised by the new development.
I'm still sad Jacob deGrom isn't a Met but it's cool to live in a world where these tweets don't ruin my week https://t.co/KfY3jezYBC
— James Schiano (@James_Schiano) February 15, 2023
Mets fans seeing. Degrom miss his arbitrary 3 months of the season pic.twitter.com/8pCQt8rp6r
— Mikey Cooks 🇭🇹 (@Mikey_Cooks) February 15, 2023
Evergreen DeGrom tweet https://t.co/dc7tw9OJRl
— Matthew Neal (@mneal25) February 15, 2023
The Annual deGrom tightness in spring training tweet https://t.co/k4GiQUuOMh
— Jerry (@Paranormal_Bass) February 15, 2023
Hopefully it is nothing more serious than some early-spring tightness and deGrom can start the season off the injured list.
NEXT: Rangers Receive Unfortunate Jacob deGrom Update
