Finally, Jacob deGrom is giving the Texas Rangers just what they had in mind when signing the Floridian to a five-year, $185 million free agent contract in December 2022.
The Rangers still have a chance to slip into the American League Wild Card Series, as MLB’s regular season dwindles down to its final three weeks.
As Sunday’s home game with the Houston Astros wraps up the three-game series, and with the Milwaukee Brewers coming to Globe Life Field on Monday, it’s an “all-hands-on-deck” approach with each game remaining. With maximum effort and assistance from Lady Luck, the Rangers could return to October Baseball for the first time since the 2023 season, when the club won the World Series championship.
However, DeGrom needs to keep his pitching game humming along in September, as he has since opening day.
Although deGrom’s name continues to pop up in the American League Cy Young Award conversation, as complimentary as well as deserving such a thought is, in reality, MLB’s Comeback Player of the Year Award seems to be a lock. After opting out of his contract with the New York Mets at the end of the 2022 season, deGrom received an early Christmas present by signing with Texas. With veteran manager Bruce Bochy coming aboard in 2023 and the addition of deGrom to the starting rotation, great expectations were anticipated by all.
The Rangers won the Commissioner’s Trophy, presented each year to the World Series champion, but did so without deGrom appearing for the club for the majority of the season. Just six starts, two wins, and 30.1 innings pitched, and deGrom’s season was shut down. He was out of action until September of last season after undergoing Tommy John surgery due to a right elbow torn UCL, a ligament in the elbow that connects the ulna to the humerus.
What to expect this season from deGrom was anyone’s guess.
The Rangers are at 73–70, five games behind the American League West-leading Astros, and this has much to do with deGrom dominating opposing hitters. This is the deGrom that Texas paid handsomely for.
In 27 games, deGrom is 11–7, 169 strikeouts in 155.2 innings of work, and is coming off an impressive 9–6 win on August 31 against the Athletics. With ample run support, deGrom mowed down the Athletics’ lineup; two hits were allowed in five innings of work.
With 19 games remaining for the Rangers’ regular season, deGrom can’t take his foot off the gas. Texas is just 1.5 games behind the Seattle Mariners for the final Wild Card slot.
Texas is trudging through the end of its schedule, having lost Nathan Eovaldi for the season last month due to a rotator cuff strain. The remainder of the Rangers’ starting five, Patrick Corbin, Kumar Rocker, Jack Leiter, and Tyler Mahle, can carry the club to October Baseball. But there is no hesitation when declaring that without deGrom’s “A” game during all remaining starts, the Rangers may once again experience an early off-season.
Few hurlers in the game could boast a resume as the rejuvenated deGrom. Texas opened its checkbook three seasons ago because of what deGrom did for the Mets. He captured the National League Cy Young Award in consecutive seasons (2018 and 2019), claimed the 2014 National League Rookie of the Year Award, was selected as an all-star four times, and twice led the National League in strikeouts. With his fully healed right pitching elbow in tow, with 155.2 innings thrown, deGrom leads the team in this category. He also leads in games started. Not having Eovaldi to take the ball every turn is taxing on the rest of the pitching staff.
DeGrom has been around long enough in the game, including a five-inning performance in Game 2 of the 2015 World Series against the Kansas City Royals, to understand how much is riding on his next couple of starts.
Whereas Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, last season’s American League Cy Young Award winner and the favorite to win it again in 2025, Boston’s Garrett Crochet, and Houston’s Hunter Brown are the top contenders to be recognized as the best pitchers heading into October, deGrom’s value in Texas is measured nine innings at a time.
Interleague play aside, deGrom, among his three contemporaries in contention for the Cy Young Award, is experiencing his first full season learning hitters in a new league. After nine seasons attacking National League batters, deGrom is making amazing strides in learning how to pitch to new teams in different ballparks.
As a kid drafted by New York out of Stetson University in 2010 as a shortstop and a pitcher, 1,800-plus career strikeouts later—once again—deGrom is carrying the weight of a whole season on his shoulders. The countdown to October is on, and this is when deGrom’s game traditionally gets to a higher level of dominance. Up next for deGrom to silence: the Brewers and Mets.
