Jacob deGrom is back, tell a friend

Jacob deGrom will make his 2022 debut for the New York Mets on August 2 against the Washington Nationals. The last time he pitched in a major league game was on July 7, 2021, when he fanned 10 Milwaukee Brewers across 7 innings of work.

The long-awaited return falls clearly into the cliché of him being “like a trade deadline addition.”

If this was a hockey game, the PA announcer would come on the speaker and say the Mets are back to full strength. If it was an Eminem song, we’d be ask to tell a friend about this return.

What can NY Mets fans expect from Jacob deGrom in his return?

Mastery. Dominance. Embarrassment for the opposing team. You can find all of that, and more, in any start deGrom makes.

The long layoff from actually pitching in regular season MLB games should have us limiting how many innings he actually goes. If deGrom can get through five of them smoothly, we need to consider it a victory.

What we see—or at least how much—from deGrom will depend on how he is feeling. He’s not the kind of pitcher to push himself too far, especially after this long layoff from working tirelessly on the mound. It could take him through the end of August before the possibility of him going eight innings is there.

However long it takes, Mets fans are just hoping he’s around for the postseason.

The Mets are fortunate to have as much wiggle room as they right now between them and the Atlanta Braves. Atlanta has cooled off while the Mets have actually warmed up over the last week. Sweeping the New York Yankees and then the Miami Marlins showed two very different yet positive attributes of this team. They wake up for the toughest opponents. They don’t play down to the weaker ones either.

There is about two months left of baseball games. deGrom is back. The Mets are winning. For some famous last words: what could possibly go wrong?