Nothing in sports is as anti-climactic as opening day, when your greatest hopes or worst fears are confirmed, at least for 24 hours. Or a miserable 48 in the case of the Rangers, still simmering in Philadelphia.
For eight innings Thursday, Skip Schumaker saw firsthand what Bruce Bochy had to put up with the last couple of years. The Rangers didn’t hit much, didn’t walk, didn’t score. Struck out 10 times. The cold light of day at Citizens Bank Park exposed all that sunshine pumped in Arizona this spring.
Of course, that’s one way to look at their 5-3 loss to the Phillies.
The other is that Jacob deGrom is up Saturday.
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As the philosopher Earl Weaver once noted, momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher, which, roughly translated, means hold your horses.
No one really believed the Rangers would come out like gangbusters Thursday, did they? Not against Cristopher Sanchez, the NL’s Cy Young runner-up last year, when the 6–6 lefthander posted a 2.50 ERA and struck out 212 in 202 innings.
The best the visitors could hope was that Sanchez would be a little off, at least enough to get him out of the game and the Rangers into the Phillies’ bullpen, and Nathan Eovaldi would hold down his end.
What the Phillies got instead was only the sixth pitcher with at least 10 strikeouts and no walks in six or more innings since at least 1900, when people first started counting such things.
Jake Burger, who singled off him in the first, called Sanchez a “bona fide superstar.” Schumaker said he was “as good as advertised,” and, unfortunately, his own starter wasn’t.
No one offered much resistance when Schumaker awarded Eovaldi the opening day honors over deGrom. He first called it “a pretty easy decision,” then reconsidered after thinking of the implications of the explanation. He ultimately cited Eovaldi’s “leadership” and “the standards he sets.” No argument here. He’s as good a teammate as anyone who’s ever passed through any of the stadiums in Arlington, JerryWorld included.
Not a bad pitcher, either, as evidenced by his otherworldly 1.73 ERA last year. If he’s going to challenge for an ERA title again, though, he’ll need to do some serious whittling on that 9.64.
My guess is Evo will be just fine this year, as will the guy who beat out Sanchez for the Cy Young last year and got chased in the first inning of the Pirates’ opening loss to the Mets.
Bad things happen even to good pitchers, particularly on opening day. Even a pitcher as good as Eovaldi, who’s less a “bona fide superstar,” as Burger described Sanchez, than a master of his craft. He brings a lot of tools to the job. If one pitch isn’t working, he reaches into his bag for another, then another and another. No matter how high the water rises, he never panics, mostly because of the size of his tool bag.
DeGrom, on the other hand, is from another planet. As Eovaldi said when our Shawn McFarland asked him this spring which pitchers on staff threw the best pitches, “Can I use deGrom for all of them?”
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A long history of injuries has muddied what should have been a slam dunk Hall of Fame case for deGrom, but it’s still a pretty good argument. Especially when FanGraphs compares it favorably to Sandy Koufax’s. You could look it up.
As noted here just this week, deGrom and Eovaldi or Eovaldi and deGrom rank as the best 1-2 in Rangers history. Tack on MacKenzie Gore, Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, if he’s ready, and the rotation stacks up with any the club has ever had.
In fact, the Rangers’ hopes ride hard on their pitching, which is good enough to match up with anyone’s. Even the Phillies, who, statistically, had the best rotation in baseball last year.
Rob Thomson will run out Aaron Nola on Saturday to counter deGrom, and you have to like the Rangers’ chances. Nola’s been one of the game’s best pitchers over the last decade, but he’s coming off a season in which he posted a 6.01 ERA. His spring was no better.
No one told me as much, or even winked, but I have to think Schumaker was thinking matchups when he decided on Eovaldi as his guy on opening day. He noted that deGrom would be getting the home opener as a consolation prize, and it’s a nice point. But there’s also a consideration that saving his best pitcher for a better shot at winning in a decidedly hostile environment is a fine idea, too.
If deGrom pitches as he normally does when healthy and the hitters display the same fight they showed in the ninth of the opener, I’d say there’s a better than reasonable chance the series will be squared going into Sunday. Pretty much all you could ask against a club coming off four straight postseason runs and legitimate aspirations for more. Might even restore your faith in the locals. Until Sunday, anyway, when we start all over again.
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