Summarizing Drew Pomeranz’s 2021 season

The title tells you that I’m going to summarize Drew Pomeranz’s season but the problem is there isn’t really anything to summarize because he just wasn’t on the field. Pomeranz’s totals this season were 25.2 innings, five earned runs, two home runs, ten walks, and 10.5 strikeouts per nine. That equates to a 1.75 ERA and a 1.130 WHIP in 27 games.

Those are good numbers but they had minimal impact because it was a small sample size compared to a full season’s workload.

Pomeranz started the season healthy and went a little more than a month before landing on the IL in May with a left shoulder impingement. He would return a month and a half later on June 29 but only stayed healthy for a couple weeks before taking his second trip to the IL on July 9 with left forearm inflammation. He’d get activated after the minimum ten days but take his final trip to the IL on August 11 (which ended his season) when left forearm inflammation arose again. He underwent surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon in August.

When Pomeranz was on the mound, he was their second best reliever. However, it didn’t really matter that he was pitching that well because he wasn’t available week in, week out for the duration of the 2021 season.

Because Pomeranz was hurt, that meant that former manager Jayce Tingler had to use other lefties, such as Tim Hill, in roles they probably weren’t expecting to be in. Hill ended up pitching a career-high 78 games this year and it’s obvious that part of the reason why that happened was because of Pomeranz’s absence.

You have to imagine that Pomeranz won’t be this injury prone again in 2022—his second of four seasons under his current $34 million contract—but it’s still valid to question whether he will be as effective as he was early on this season.