The Texas Rangers are currently in trade-deadline limbo, sitting at .500 as the halfway point of the 2025 season nears, and speculation is heating up around their ace, Jacob deGrom.
MLB insider Joel Sherman of the New York Post first tabled the notion of a potential reunion between the 36-year-old right-hander and his former team, the New York Mets, with whom he spent the first nine years of his career.
The Mets could certainly use the added pitching depth and a proven ace, to boot. The first half of their highly successful 2025 campaign has been dotted with injuries to the starting rotation. While Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas inch back from the injured list, they just lost their ace, Kodai Senga, for at least a month with a Grade 1 hamstring strain.
Following great starts, Griffin Canning and Tylor Megill are significantly regressing.
If things were to go further south for the Rangers, calls will undoubtedly flood in for deGrom, who has been stellar this season by going 6-2 with a 2.19 ERA and 80 strikeouts across his first 14 starts.
But the idea of the two-time NL Cy Young Award winner and arguably one of the greatest pitchers in Mets franchise history returning to Queens appears to be mostly fantasy.
A significant amount of it revolves around the price tag. Obviously, the Mets’ hypothetical package to acquire deGrom would not have to be so large if they were to take on the majority of his money. He still has two years and $75 million remaining on his contract, which also includes a $40 million payday for this season.
Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns has two proven track records:
- Don’t disband the farm system, which he would have to do if he wanted to get deGrom, and for the Rangers to eat some of that money.
- Don’t spend big-time money on starting pitching, as seen in the signings of his reclamation projects over the last two years, Luis Severino, Manaea, Clay Holmes, Canning, and Montas.
There is also the uncertainty that comes with deGrom’s injury history, which the Mets are obviously familiar with. The righty underwent Tommy John surgery in 2010, had a season-ending procedure on the ulnar nerve in his elbow in 2016, pitched 92 innings in 2021 before being shut down for forearm tightness, and then appeared in just 64.1 innings in 2022 — his final year with the Mets — while dealing with a stress reaction in his shoulder that held him out until August.
In his first year with the Rangers after signing a five-year, $185 million pact, he underwent a second Tommy John surgery in June of 2023. He came back late last season to throw just 10.2 innings.
Any potential trade suitor would take a significant gamble in taking a run at deGrom should he be made available, but the numbers when he’s healthy speak for themselves. Since the start of the 2018 season, he owns a 2.08 ERA.
But would deGrom even consider coming back to the Mets?
He has a full no-trade clause built into his contract, and he did not seem all too interested in staying a Met when he hit the open market following the 2022 season. After all, New York offered him a three-year deal in the $120 million range, which carried a slightly higher average annual value than the Rangers’ offer but lacked the length.
