Jacob deGrom’s 2026 season won’t start as scheduled.
The two-time Cy Young Award winner was scratched from his outing Saturday against the Phillies due to neck stiffness, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The outlet said the Rangers aren’t too concerned and that the right-hander could make a start on the team’s opening road trip.
Jacob Latz will start in deGrom’s stead in the second matchup of a three-game set.
Health, particularly his elbow, had been an issue for deGrom this decade after a run of dominance.
From 2021-24, he averaged just a touch over 49 innings per season, and in 2023, his first after leaving the Mets for the Rangers on a five-year, $185 million deal, he underwent Tommy John surgery.
The surgery limited him to just 41 innings in the first two seasons of his Rangers contract.
But finally, last season, deGrom was healthy again and an All-Star again.
He threw 172 2/3 innings — his most since 2019 — and held a 2.97 ERA to finish eighth in American League Cy Young voting.
After his first start of spring training this year, deGrom set some benchmarks he’d like to hit this year, if health allowed.
“I’d like to throw 200 innings again,” deGrom told reporters in early March. “So, we’ll just see. Last year, I was able to make 30 starts, and I felt like I could have kept going. If we would have made the playoffs, I felt like I was ready to go. So, we’ll build off that and just see how this year is going to go. Hopefully I run out there as many times as I can.”
The Rangers, after their weekend series in Philadelphia, go to Baltimore for a three-game set with the Orioles, which would give deGrom another chance to make his debut on the road.
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