WASHINGTON — A day after he threw a hand grenade into the Mets’ All-Star break, Jacob deGrom looked like a man of peace, for he had said his piece.
“It’s actually been fine,” the right-hander said Tuesday at Nationals Park, a few hours before the All-Star Game began. “I think we expressed that we’ve enjoyed it here. We’d like to stay. It’s up to the Mets. I’ve really enjoyed my time here and enjoyed winning here. I’d like to get back to that.”
DeGrom’s agent, Brodie Van Wagenen, won him and his client some back pages on Monday, when the All-Stars hold news conferences and work out, by declaring deGrom’s wish to get an extension from the Mets and, short of that, for the Mets to explore a trade of him. The 30-year-old deGrom can’t become a free agent until after the 2020 season.
No one from the Mets reached out to him in the wake of his and Van Wagenen’s comments, deGrom said, and he expressed no worries about getting negative feedback from Mets fans for stirring things up a little.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think the way we put it was, we first of all would like to stay here. I have a good relationship with the Mets. We’ve had one my whole career here. We were just expressing that we’d like to stay here and be a part of the future here. So I think the other thing, that was kind of the option. If they don’t see [us together] in the future, get what you can for me. But our main goal would be to stay here.”
The typically stoic right-hander said he would be all right if the Mets chose the third option, neither extending deGrom nor trading him, as he understands from all of his undeserved losses and no-decisions that you can’t control everything in life.Besides, deGrom insisted that he can envision the Mets contending again by 2020, saying: “I think so. Look at how many guys got hurt this year already. [If] you’ve got those guys on the field, they come up in a couple of situations, we probably win a few more ballgames.”
The Yankees’ Gleyber Torres (strained right hip) ran from first base to third base Tuesday as part of his rehabilitation. He will fly to Tampa on Wednesday morning to continue his program, he said. Torres hopes to rejoin the Yankees on July 23 in St. Petersburg, Fla.
With Joel Sherman