The Texas Rangers are running out of runway, and Jacob deGrom’s latest outing only sharpened the panic.
Texas was blasted by the lowly Minnesota Twins, leaving the Rangers staring at a season that could still end with them becoming the first division winner to finish at .500 or worse. If they do squeeze into October, the biggest question hanging over them is whether deGrom can be trusted when everything is on the line.
That concern is hard to ignore after one of the roughest starts he’s had as a Ranger. In a game the club badly needed, deGrom was tagged for eight runs in just four innings. The trouble snowballed in the second inning, when the wheels came off.
Jacob deGrom (TEX) allowed eight earned runs in four innings pic.twitter.com/UCR60QZ6tg
There is still a reason Texas can talk itself into a rebound. The stuff itself looked fine, and sometimes a pitcher simply has a night where everything goes sideways.
This was one of those nights for deGrom. But the timing could hardly be worse.
With only two games left, every remaining matchup is effectively season-defining for the AL West, and Houston owns the tiebreaker over Texas. That makes every deGrom start feel like a must-win assignment.
It also wasn’t an isolated stumble. deGrom has had other rough stretches this season and has managed to bounce back after them. The bigger issue now is whether he gets another chance to do it for the Rangers. If there is another start, it will come in the wild card series against the White Sox - or maybe not until spring training.
This may end up standing as deGrom’s worst regular season in Texas. He stayed healthy enough to make 31 starts, but the results weren’t his usual standard: a 4.21 ERA across 162 2/3 innings.
Statcast paints a more encouraging picture, though, with an xERA of 3.32, nearly a full run lower than his actual ERA. That suggests bad luck has been part of the story for him this year, and it’s the kind of bad luck that could end up costing the Rangers their season.
The contact quality is another red flag. Statcast says opposing hitters barreled his pitches 44.9% of the time, which sits in the 4th percentile in baseball. That is the kind of number that should worry Texas, especially with age beginning to chip away at the kind of stuff that once made deGrom nearly untouchable.
For now, the Rangers are left trying to survive their final two games against the Twins and hoping the Athletics can give them help against the Astros in West Sacramento.
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