ARLINGTON, Texas — Jacob deGrom faced the minimum through 7 innings Monday night, and the Texas Rangers beat the Athletics 8-1 at Globe Life Field.
deGrom allowed 1 hit, did not walk a batter, and struck out 8. He threw 85 pitches, 56 of them for strikes, and left after the seventh with an 8-0 lead. The win moved him to 10-9.
Lawrence Butler opened the second inning with a single to right field for the only hit against him. Max Muncy grounded into a double play later in the inning, and no Athletics hitter reached again until Robby Ahlstrom took over in the eighth. deGrom threw a first-pitch strike to 13 of the 21 batters he faced.
Six days earlier at Rate Field, deGrom lasted 3 2/3 innings and gave up 6 hits, 8 runs, and 5 walks in an 11-7 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 25. Six of those runs scored in the first inning.
“I just had to get ahead strike one and go from there,” deGrom said. “That was the main goal. Danny did a nice job. We were on the same page all night and just had a good mix, whether it was slider strikes, changeup strikes. I don’t know if we threw a curveball for strike one. But anyways, we mixed it up throughout the night and were able to throw strikes. I think that was the biggest thing, just location, being ahead, and going right after guys. So that’s what I knew I needed to do and I was trying to do, and the last one just wasn’t able to. So I came in and was just really trying to see how many times I could try to hit the glove tonight.”
Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said the defense turned in good plays behind deGrom, including double plays, and that Danny Jansen was fantastic behind the plate.
“It was a good complete team win, something that we’ve hoped for over that road trip,” Schumaker said. “We’ve had some good starts and some tough offensive days, some really good offensive days and some tough starts from a starting pitcher. So for Jacob to go out and do what he did, seven innings of one-hit ball was exactly what we needed. We had four available guys really in the bullpen as well, and two of them were high leverage. So we didn’t want to use anybody, obviously, in a down game. And so whatever the game plan and everything else that he executed was fantastic.”
“The sinker that he was utilizing inside on the righties was really, really good,” Schumaker continued. “It opened up the slider. And then I thought the Díaz getting the first run in after Foscue flying out to shallow right was big. Just for us to get the first run across and then obviously Freeman getting another run right after that was really, really big for the offense as well.”
Jacob deGrom’s Sinker Usage Against The Athletics
deGrom said he and Jansen went through the Athletics lineup before the game and found hitters they thought the sinker would work against.
“I just said to Danny, let’s see how it is in the bullpen,” deGrom explained. “And then talking about the hitters before the game there were some guys that we thought it would be useful to throw it to. So had a good feel for it in the bullpen, it was, I was locating it well, so coming in I said to Danny, I was like, hey, we can run it off to some of those lefties, especially if we’ve gone like backdoor slider, run a sinker off, just kind of a change in the look of how I normally pitch and having a good feel for it. I was confident in throwing it tonight.”
At home this season, deGrom is 7-2 with a 2.42 ERA. He is 3-7 with a 5.86 ERA on the road.
His previous start at Globe Life Field came Aug. 20 against the Washington Nationals, when he allowed 1 hit over 6 shutout innings and struck out 10. He passed 2,000 career strikeouts that night.
deGrom entered Monday 2-3 with a 7.20 ERA in five August starts.
“I’m pretty frustrated after most rough starts, but that one was really bad,” deGrom said. “What, five walks? I ended up giving up eight runs. That was really frustrating. Especially, it’s the time that we can’t afford to have those kind of starts. For me, that really bothered me. We needed to go out there and win games there. I had an absolute terrible start. I needed to turn the page and prepare for this one and hopefully moving forward can continue to throw the ball how I expect to.”
Schumaker said he expected Monday to be a good day for that reason, because deGrom was upset about the previous start and would come in on the attack.
Texas Rangers’ Offense Against Gage Jump
Texas scored in each of the first five innings against Gage Jump except the first. Brandon Nimmo led off the second with a swinging-bunt single that Jump bobbled, Jake Burger doubled, and Justin Foscue flied out to shallow right field. Elias Díaz grounded out to shortstop to bring Nimmo home, and Cody Freeman singled to center to score Burger.
Nimmo singled home Corey Seager in the third inning. Foscue led off the fourth with a 417-foot home run to left-center field, his 10th of the season.
In the fifth, the Rangers loaded the bases with nobody out. Nimmo hit a sacrifice fly to left that scored Ezequiel Duran, Burger singled to center to bring in Seager, and Evan Carter grounded into a fielder’s choice that scored Wyatt Langford.
Texas finished 4-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left 6 on base.
“Jake Burger had a fantastic game tonight, really good,” Schumaker explained. “We had some good big two-out hits too. Brandon Nimmo with a big two-out RBI. Freeman we talked about. But Jake Burger was so good. Some really good quality at-bats. We had quality at-bats up and down the lineup, but Jake Burger kind of set the tone as far as swinging the bat and really hard contact. He obviously clipped him last time in Sacramento, so he had a good feeling about it coming into the game, and he provided some really nice offense.”
“The bases loaded has been the nemesis for sure, and the stuff that I’d rather talk about scoring them and not scoring them than not scoring them,” Schumaker continued. “And today was one of those really good offensive days carried over from yesterday, which we hoped, and hopefully we carry it over again tomorrow.”
Nimmo finished with 2 hits, 2 RBI, and a run scored. Burger went 2-for-4 with an RBI and scored a run. Freeman went 2-for-4 with 2 RBI and added a stolen base, and he drove in his second run with a single to left in the eighth inning.
Jump took the loss and fell to 6-9. The rookie left-hander went 4 1/3 innings and allowed 6 hits, 7 runs, and 3 walks with 2 strikeouts on 91 pitches. Chris Roycroft and José Suarez covered the rest for the Athletics.
Ahlstrom struck out 2 in a scoreless eighth. Ben Peoples gave up a leadoff single to Carlos Cortes in the ninth and a double to Jonah Heim, and Darell Hernaiz hit a sacrifice fly to center field for the Athletics’ run.
The Rangers are 68-70 and have won two in a row. They trail the Cleveland Guardians by 1 1/2 games for the third and final American League wild-card spot, and they play 16 of their final 25 games at home.
Texas went 2-4 on the six-game trip through Chicago and Milwaukee that ended Sunday.
The Athletics dropped their fourth in a row and fell to 53-85. They finished August 8-20, their worst August since a 7-21 month in 1978.
Left-hander MacKenzie Gore (7-10, 4.40 ERA) starts for Texas on Tuesday against Athletics left-hander Brady Basso (0-1, 4.50). First pitch is 7:05 p.m. CT on Rangers Sports Network.
