KANSAS CITY -- Jacob deGrom's goal this season -- no matter how improbable it may have been -- was to make his start each and every turn.
With six weeks left in the season, he had accomplished that up to this point. But the Rangers are planning to skip deGrom's next turn through the rotation, which was scheduled for Wednesday night vs. the Royals, due to shoulder fatigue. President of baseball operations Chris Young said before Tuesday's contest at Kauffman Stadium that deGrom returned to Texas and was evaluated by team physician Dr. Keith Meister, who performed his Tommy John surgery in June 2023.
Young said that deGrom didn’t want to skip his start, preferring instead to be pushed back a day or two, but the organization took the decision out of his hands in order to keep him as healthy as possible.
For now, Texas is considering it a workload management situation. deGrom has pitched 140 1/3 innings so far in 2025, his highest total since his Cy Young Award-winning 2019 season with the Mets -- during which he crossed the 200-inning threshold for the third consecutive year.
"Obviously it's tough timing, but honestly, Jacob's been tremendous for us all season long, and the last thing we as an organization are going to do is put him in harm's way after everything he's done this year,” Young said. “The hope is to skip a start and then finish strong. Everything checked out great, just normal fatigue. This workload is the most he's had in a long time. Jacob wanted to keep going. We took it out of his hands.”
deGrom only made nine starts through his first two seasons with Texas due to Tommy John surgery in June 2023. He had only 38 starts over the previous three years with the Mets before joining the Rangers, including the COVID-shortened 2020 season and a number of injuries between 2021-22.
deGrom, who was named an All-Star this year for the fifth time in his career, has a 10-5 record with a 2.76 ERA. He last started on Friday in Toronto and tossed five scoreless innings with five strikeouts.
"That was his goal, to make every start,” said manager Bruce Bochy. “He really just wanted a couple more days. We're the ones being a little bit more on a cautious side. That's why we had him looked at. The results came from Dr. Meister, they were all good. We just feel like we should go ahead and give him a full skip. But I agree, it’s been an impressive year on that end.”