Mets’ Jacob deGrom to make first rehab start

The Mets can celebrate the Third of July this year. 

On Sunday, after 362 days of waiting, Jacob deGrom will be pitching in a professional game again. 

The Mets’ co-ace will throw about 25 pitches for Single-A Port St. Lucie, the club announced Saturday, which will be the first time deGrom has pitched in a game since July 7 of last year. 

He threw seven innings of two-run ball that day against the Brewers before a series of injuries, primarily to his right arm, derailed his 2021 campaign. He now will face off against the Jupiter Hammerheads in what will be the largest step yet in deGrom’s quest to return to health and to the Mets. 

DeGrom was shut down on April 1, after two spring training starts, with a stress reaction in his right scapula. He began throwing again in May and has been building up since. He threw his third live batting practice session last week. 

“The fact that he’s able to meet these goals and standards is keeping us optimistic and on course,” general manager Billy Eppler said Saturday before the Mets played the Rangers at Citi Field. 

Asked if deGrom facing professional hitters again has made the thought of him healthy and at the top of the rotation more real, manager Buck Showalter said: “It’s always been real. It wasn’t ‘if,’ it was ‘when.’ ” 

The next “when” concerns the date deGrom will pitch again in the major leagues. He essentially will be on a spring training schedule, needing to incrementally increase his pitch counts and inning lengths. Showalter said deGrom will not complete his rehab assignment until he has pitched at least five innings in an outing. 

“He’s hit every benchmark,” the manager said of the two-time Cy Young winner and four-time All-Star. “We’ll see how he does on Sunday. … We’ll go outing to outing and see how he feels the next day.” 

With his 25 pitches, deGrom should throw about two innings Sunday. If he increases by one inning each outing and stays on regular rest without any setbacks or rest days, he could return after four rehab starts for a July 23 home game against the Padres. 

If there is a slight setback or a few extra rest days baked in, the July 26-27 games at Citi Field against the Yankees also loom as a possible juicy season debut for the 34-year-old. 

The Mets, who declined to give a firm timeline of when deGrom could progress to the big leagues, will rely upon more than pitch counts and his pitch quality to gauge how he is progressing, though. 

“We’ll probably use some of the objective testing that we do to guide that,” Eppler said. “We’ll get manual, clinical type tests done so we can see what [deGrom’s] strength looks like. Then take Jake’s feedback and make an educated decision based on all of those inputs.” 

The Mets have consistently said deGrom is on a schedule, and that schedule will not bring him back sooner than expected, as it has for Max Scherzer. 

Two days after deGrom’s return to game action, the Mets expect Scherzer to make his return to major league action following an oblique strain. Scherzer is slotted in to pitch at Cincinnati on Tuesday. 

Without the co-aces atop their rotation, the Mets raced to the top of the NL East. Their lead has dwindled, however, in the past few weeks. The greatest strength of the club is supposed to be a 1-2 punch that could compete with any pair of aces in baseball history. Thus far, the two-headed monster has been more theory than reality. 

Beginning Sunday, the Mets, who thus far have been carried by merely solid pitching and solid offense, can envision a truly overpowering rotation for the second half of the season and postseason. 

But with deGrom, who is about to reach the one-year anniversary of his last action in a major league game, the club will keep its fingers crossed. 

“We’ll take each day as it comes and see if an adjustment needs to be made. So far we haven’t had to make an adjustment,” Showalter said. “I’ve been really impressed how that calendar they gave me two months ago has followed just about everything.”