ARLINGTON, Texas — With his recent injury history, there is going to be a tendency for Rangers fans to hold their breath a little every time Jacob deGrom starts.
The good news Tuesday: deGrom was just fine. Better than fine, actually. He piled up nine strikeouts in seven innings against Kansas City and threw more 100 mph pitches than any Rangers starter since the stat was first officially measured by the Statcast system 16 years ago. And the Rangers walked off with an 8-5 10-inning win on Jonah Heim’s two-out, three-run homer.
If only we could just leave it at that.
Instead, it was the other franchise player that went down.
On what looked like a smart piece of opposite-field hitting, shortstop Corey Seager, the $325-million man, pulled up between first and second base in the fifth inning, grabbed back at his left hamstring and limped into the bag with a double, then walked off with an athletic trainer. It was the eighth time Seager reached base in nine plate appearances in the first two games of the homestand. It will also likely be the last time for a while.
The Rangers announced the injury as “left hamstring tightness” and said he would be further evaluated. That usually means waiting for an MRI to reveal the severity of a strain. Seager has once before dealt with a left hamstring issue, missing a month of the 2019 season while with Los Angeles.
It will force the Rangers to answer a question they dearly hoped to avoid: Who plays the position in Seager’s extended absence?
Utility man Josh Smith replaced Seager on the bases and at shortstop for the remainder of Tuesday. He is, after all, the team’s backup shortstop, but that was under the idea that the backup would only be needed to give Seager an occasional rest, not to play every day.
The other possibility: Slide Marcus Semien from second base back to his original position: Short. Semien primarily played short from the time he got to the big leagues in 2014 through 2020. He moved to second after going to Toronto as a free agent for the 2021 season. He ended up winning a Gold Glove at the position and signed with the Rangers to stay at second.
Under former manager Chris Woodward, the Rangers used Semien at short for 13 games as a fill-in for Seager, but it put Semien in an uncomfortable position of working out regularly at one position and having to occasionally slide over. In the last two months of the season, Smith played short when Seager got a day off.
Moving Semien to short might also allow the Rangers to better balance playing time for Smith and Ezequiel Duran, the other middle infielder on the roster. Duran is more comfortable at second than short. Smith and Duran, who had platooned in left for the first 10 days of the season, could essentially platoon at second with Robbie Grossman moving back to left field.
Neither of the two middle infielders in the minors who are on the 40-man roster – Jonathan Ornelas and Luisangel Acuña – have any major league experience. Ornelas, 22, has only 28 at-bats above Double-A. He did not play in Round Rock’s Tuesday afternoon game, a day after the Express had a day off. Acuña, 21, began Tuesday with only 183 career plate appearances above Class A.
Seager had gone 3 for 4 with a walk and his first homer of the season in Monday’s series opener. He took a walk in the first inning Tuesday, singled and eventually scored in the third. In the fifth, with Kansas City sliding an outfielder into the short right field hole to effectively shift him, Seager lined a ball the opposite way to a vacated left field for what seemed like an easy double. Midway between first and second his leg caught and he grabbed back at it.
It turned the game in a decidedly different direction. Until that moment, it had been the deGrom show, even if only 17,760 people showed up to watch it under clear skies and with the roof pulled back.
Over the course of seven innings, he threw nine of his 98 pitches at 100 mph or higher. In the 16 years since Statcast started tracking velocities, Rangers starters had combined for six previous pitches at 100 mph or higher. And four of them had been deGrom in his first two starts.
It came on the heels of No. 5 starter Andrew Heaney striking out nine consecutive Royals to tie a major league record.
Over the first two games of the series, Rangers starters piled up 19 strikeouts and walked just two Kansas City hitters. That is the story of what this rotation can do: It can extricate itself from jams with the strikeout without putting free runners on base with walks. The rotation now has a strikeout-to-walk rate of 4.4 to 1.
At the top of that sits deGrom, who has now struck out 27 in 16.2 innings and walked just two. After a slow start to spring due to concerns over a side muscle issue and following two injury-filled seasons in New York, deGrom has looked sharper with each successive start. It’s a good story for the Rangers.
It should have been the story on Tuesday, too.
