Thoughts on a 3-2 Rangers win

Rangers 3, Red Sox 2

• Two years ago today, Jacob deGrom made his Rangers debut, in a game where he gave up five runs in 3.2 IP, though it was a game the Rangers ended up winning.
• Jacob deGrom’s 2025 Rangers debut went a little better, its fair to say. And once again, it was a game the Rangers ended up winning.
• What occurs to me now is that deGrom’s outing seemed…kind of routine, almost. Relaxed. It was just a day at the office, seemingly. deGrom didn’t strike anyone out the first time through the order, and I was thinking, well, maybe he’s just not quite there yet. Then he ended up striking out six of the final 11 batters he faced, and when I look at the sheet, he got 16 swings and misses out of 73 pitches. If you get whiffs on 22% of the pitches you throw, you’re doing something really right.
• deGrom’s slider was deadly this afternoon. He threw it 29 times — more than any other pitch — and generated swings on 20 of them, along with getting four called strikes with it. Of the 20 swings, 10 were whiffs, six were fouls, and just four were put in play, with an average exit velocity of 81.3 mph.
• deGrom allowed five base runners. — an opposite field down the line double by Kristian Campbell and a flared single by Ceddanne Rafaela. He walked a pair of batters and hit one. But I don’t think that quite captures how unhittable he was.
• David Hamilton had a fly out to end the 2nd inning that was 101.5 mph off the bat and had a .590 xBA. The next highest xBAs on any ball in play against deGrom were Rafaela’s flared single, at .250, and Campbell’s double, at .200. Nothing else was above .160.
• I had hoped they’d send deGrom back out there for another inning, given that he was at just 73 pitches, but it is was deGrom’s first start of the season, and the Rangers have indicated they don’t want to push him too hard, want to make sure he’s healthy all season. I can’t say that I blame them.
• Shawn Armstrong came on for deGrom in the sixth and immediately gave up the 1-0 lead the Rangers were clinging to, though it wasn’t all his fault. After a one out walk and a fielder’s choice, he got ahead of Wilyer Abreu 0-2, and then appeared to try to get him to chase a fastball that was supposed to be up and outside of the zone. The ball ended up getting too much of the outside part of the plate and Abreu smacked it the other way for a run scoring double. It looked like Armstrong had then finished things off with the score tied when, on pitch nine to the next batter, Connor Wong, he generated a ground ball to third base. Ezequiel Duran’s throw short-hopped Jake Burger, though, and Burger couldn’t scoop it, allowing Wong to reach safely and Abreu to score.
• That ended up being all the scoring the Red Sox did, though, which is not to say that there wasn’t a little heartburn along the way. Robert Garcia had a 1-2-3 seventh inning, but seemed to be struggling with his command, giving up a couple of barreled balls by Rafaela and Jarred Duran for fly outs to begin the inning. He did get Rafael Devers looking on a 3-2 slider to end the inning, though.
• Chris Martin allowed a leadoff single in the eighth, followed by a stolen base, but retired the next two batters, walked Abreu intentionally, then got Wong on a backwards K. Luke Jackson made things a little scary in the ninth, giving up a two out double to Duran, then walking Devers on seven pitches (ending with a way out of the zone fastball for ball four), but K’d Alex Bregman on three pitches, the last of which was a weird swing and it wasn’t entirely clear at first if he swung or what. But he did and the game was over and the Rangers won.
• The Red Sox stole three bases today, and were seven for seven on stolen base attempts this series. That’s something the Rangers will probably want to try to tighten up on.
• Offensively, the Rangers’ game plan from the outset was clearly to be aggressive early, and Red Sox pitchers ended up throwing just 87 pitches over eight innings. They looked like they might put up a crooked number early, when Jake Burger, Kyle Higashioka, and Leody Taveras all singled to load the bases with no one out in the second. They only plated one of those runs, however, with a Duran sac fly being sandwiched between a Jonathan Ornelas K and a Marcus Semien groundout.
• The Ornelas K started a stretch of 12 batters retired in a row by Red Sox starter Richard Fitts, which was causing a bit of gloominess for those of us wanting the Rangers to, you know, score some runs, maybe win the game. The streak was broken by Wyatt Langford leading off the sixth, when he hit a high pop fly the opposite way that went just far enough to clear the fence and tie the game. That tie lasted for just two batters, as Adolis Garcia gave the Rangers the lead when he crushed an 0-2 sweeper to left-center, a ball that was so clearly out that Garcia was able to slowly saunter out of the box and bat flip before starting his trot.
• That was it as far as the scoring went for the Rangers. The only other hit, other than the three singles to start the second and the two sixth inning homers, was single by Wyatt Langford in the first.
• The bats haven’t looked quite as sharp as I think we would have hoped to start the season. However, the pitching has been good enough that it hasn’t really been that much of a problem thusfar.
• Jacob deGrom topped out at 98.1 mph with his fastball, averaging 96.7 mph. Shawn Armstrong hit 93.8 mph with his sinker. Robert Garcia touched 93.3 mph with his fastball. Chris Martin’s fastball maxed out at 94.9 mph. Luke Jackson reached 94.9 mph with his fastball.
• Adolis Garcia’s home run was 108.1 mph off the bat, and he had a 103.1 mph ground out. Kyle Higashioka had a 106.5 mph single and a 106.4 mph ground out.
• On to Cincinnati, and preserving the Two hold on first place in the West.