ARLINGTON, Texas — He shook his head at the question and maintained that each outing comes with the same outlook as any other.
Jacob deGrom, is there any added motivation, any extra oomph to deliver a strong outing after your last ended prematurely due to an injury concern?
“I wouldn’t say there’s added motivation,” deGrom said. “Every time I go out there, I want to put up zeroes. That’s just how I take the field.”
Hey, a double-digit strikeout day probably feels great regardless of the circumstances. But the Rangers have got to feel swell when their $185 million ace (with a recent track record of injury) can put the wellness discussion to bed with relative ease.
DeGrom pitched six innings, struck out 11 batters, allowed one earned run on three hits and walked none in Texas’ 5-2 win over the Oakland Athletics on Sunday at Globe Life Field, just six days after he left a no-hitter in the fourth inning versus the Kansas City Royals with wrist soreness. The victory secured a fourth-straight series win for the Rangers — something that hasn’t happened since 2018 — and will send them off to Cincinnati with a 14-7 record and a two-and-a-half game lead over the Houston Astros in the American League West standings.
The 34-year-old now leads MLB with 43 strikeouts in 26.2 innings pitched. His ERA — now at 3.04 — has continued to drop since his uncharacteristic Opening Day start. He’s given up just three walks all season and became the fifth active player to record 60 or more double-digit strikeout games.
Point being: he’s the kind of guy you’d want on your side in a series-deciding game three.
“It’s a great feeling,” Rangers designated hitter Robbie Grossman said. “It’s where you want to be.”
And it’s where the Rangers are. Oakland, which let Texas score a season-high 18 runs the night prior, found that out early.
Not the best luck for a team that might be headed to Las Vegas.
The two-time Cy Young award winner struck out two batters in each of the first three innings and stranded a runner at second base in the second with consecutive strikeouts to end the inning. He reached 101 miles per hour in the first to strike out Ryan Noda, and cracked 99 mph on 13 other pitches.
The lone mistake came in the fifth inning when Oakland designated hitter Shea Langeliers sent a deGrom slider 432 feet to left field for a two-run home run. Only one of the runs was earned, though, as Oakland’s Aledmys Diaz reached on a throwing error from Rangers shortstop Ezequiel Duran.
DeGrom responded with five consecutive strikeouts to cap his day.
“I was pretty frustrated,” deGrom said of Langeliers’ blast. “I made a lot of good pitches, then leave one over the middle and he hit it really hard. So that frustrated me.”
DeGrom threw 80 pitches, 57 for strikes.
“That was far enough, we were good,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “I’m sure he could have gone out there [for the seventh], but I made the call. The bullpen was fresh, and there was a little [injury] thing going on there and we said we weren’t concerned about it, but just trying to keep that under control.”
Grossman, who entered Sunday’s game hitting just .196, gave Texas a lead in the second with a three-run home run to left field. He drove in another in the fourth with a deep sacrifice fly that scored Leody Taveras. The Rangers scored a fifth insurance run in the eighth when Taveras scored from third base on a wild pitch.
The Rangers, who’ve scored the second-most runs in baseball with 139, are now 12-0 when they score five or more runs in a game.
“I was just glad I could do something to help the team win a game,” Grossman said. “Plus we got the series win, so that’s even more exciting.”
Taveras went 3 for 4 with three runs scored. Since Wednesday’s win over the Kansas City Royals, Taveras has hit 7 for 15 with six runs scored and three extra-base hits. He missed the season’s first 11 games with an oblique strain, but has begun to round into form after just two hits in his first six games back from the injured list.
“He’s seeing the ball better,” Bochy said. “He missed a lot of time, we talked about that in spring training. And then he went down and we tried to rehab him, but we had needs so we brought him up, maybe a little too early. But you see it now starting to come with more at bats.”
Texas’ bullpen picked up where deGrom left off and finished the job as it has most of the season. Brock Burke (0.2 innings pitched), Jonathan Hernandez (1.1 innings pitched) and Will Smith (one inning pitched and a save) combined for three scoreless innings. The Rangers’ bullpen has the second-best ERA in all of baseball at 2.61.
“It’s the confidence in the guys we have down there [in the bullpen],” said Bochy, who gave closer Jose Leclerc a break on Sunday. “They’re all throwing the ball well, and they’re all the kind of guys that want to be out there in those situations.”
