The only saving grace to the piece of news that Mets fans are about to hear is that it could have been much more deflating had it happened about a month ago. At that point, the Mets were sitting atop the division with a 49-42 record, fresh off of a 15-11 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. They had high hopes for the playoffs — or, at least relatively high hopes — and were on a pretty good track to do so.
Then, it would have been really crushing to hear that Jacob deGrom supposedly had a 0.1% chance of returning to pitch again that season. But that rumor had not yet surfaced, and so there was hope that the team could keep their first place spot in the standings while they waited for their once-in-a-generation ace to return to the rotation.
But alas, we're at a different point in the season now. The Mets are 60-60. FiveThirtyEight's projections give them a nine percent chance of making the playoffs. Baseball Reference is less optimistic — perhaps more pessimistic is the better phrase — giving them a 2.9 percent chance. And, to kick them while they're down, the latest buzz is that it's practically a guarantee that there will be no more Jacob deGrom in 2021.
According to Pat Ragazzo of Sports Illustrated's "Inside the Mets," a source placed deGrom's likelihood of being done for the season at 99.9 percent.
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The last we had heard prior to this nugget was that deGrom would not throw for another two weeks, getting shutdown ahead of another MRI to check and see if his elbow inflammation had improved. That meant the earliest he could have returned would have been in mid-September, putting more doubt around the idea of him making a return. So though we can't say this wasn't expected, it seems to be the final straw in ruling him out for the rest of the season without actually doing so.
If this is the case, deGrom will still have pitched one of the greatest seasons the game has ever seen — albeit a shorter one than desired — with a 7-2 record and a jaw-dropping 1.08 ERA. His 146 strikeouts in 92.0 innings pitched gives him a career-best 14.3 strikeouts per nine, and his control was also devastating, with career-bests in strikeout per walk (13.27) and walks per nine (1.1).
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