{"id":646982,"date":"2026-03-27T17:44:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/646982\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T17:44:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T17:44:35","slug":"after-opening-day-thud-jacob-degrom-can-reset-tone-to-start-of-rangers-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/646982\/","title":{"rendered":"After opening day thud, Jacob deGrom can reset tone to start of Rangers\u2019 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, still simmering in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

For eight innings Thursday, Skip Schumaker saw firsthand what Bruce Bochy had to put up with the last couple of years. The Rangers didn\u2019t hit much<\/a>, didn\u2019t walk, didn\u2019t score. Struck out 10 times. The cold light of day at Citizens Bank Park exposed all that sunshine pumped in Arizona this spring.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s one way to look at their 5-3 loss to the Phillies.<\/p>\n

The other is that Jacob deGrom is up Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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As the philosopher Earl Weaver once noted, momentum is the next day\u2019s starting pitcher, which, roughly translated, means hold your horses.<\/p>\n

No one really believed the Rangers would come out like gangbusters Thursday, did they? Not against Cristopher Sanchez, the NL\u2019s Cy Young runner-up last year, when the 6\u20136 lefthander posted a 2.50 ERA and struck out 212 in 202 innings.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 bullpen, and Nathan Eovaldi would hold down his end.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Jake Burger<\/a>, who singled off him in the first, called Sanchez a \u201cbona fide superstar.\u201d Schumaker said he was \u201cas good as advertised,\u201d and, unfortunately, his own starter wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

No one offered much resistance when Schumaker awarded Eovaldi the opening day honors over deGrom. He first called it \u201ca pretty easy decision,\u201d then reconsidered after thinking of the implications of the explanation. He ultimately cited Eovaldi\u2019s \u201cleadership\u201d and \u201cthe standards he sets.\u201d No argument here. He\u2019s as good a teammate as anyone who\u2019s ever passed through any of the stadiums in Arlington, JerryWorld included.<\/p>\n

Not a bad pitcher, either, as evidenced by his otherworldly 1.73 ERA last year. If he\u2019s going to challenge for an ERA title again, though, he\u2019ll need to do some serious whittling on that 9.64.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 opening loss to the Mets.<\/p>\n

Bad things happen even to good pitchers, particularly on opening day. Even a pitcher as good as Eovaldi, who\u2019s less a \u201cbona fide superstar,\u201d as Burger described Sanchez, than a master of his craft. He brings a lot of tools to the job. If one pitch isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, \u201cCan I use deGrom for all of them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"What<\/p>\n

A long history of injuries has muddied what should have been a slam dunk Hall of Fame case for deGrom, but it\u2019s still a pretty good argument. Especially when FanGraphs compares it favorably to Sandy Koufax\u2019s. You could look it up.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s ready, and the rotation stacks up with any the club has ever had.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Rangers\u2019 hopes ride hard on their pitching, which is good enough to match up with anyone\u2019s. Even the Phillies, who, statistically, had the best rotation in baseball last year.<\/p>\n

Rob Thomson will run out Aaron Nola on Saturday to counter deGrom, and you have to like the Rangers\u2019 chances. Nola\u2019s been one of the game\u2019s best pitchers over the last decade, but he\u2019s coming off a season in which he posted a 6.01 ERA. His spring was no better.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a nice point. But there\u2019s also a consideration that saving his best pitcher for a better shot at winning in a decidedly hostile environment is a fine idea, too.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d say there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

SportsDay Rangers Episode 31: The one with Robinson Chirinos<\/a>Evan Grant Q&A: Ask your questions to DMN\u2019s Rangers insider in Friday\u2019s live chat<\/a><\/p>\n

Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing in sports is as anti-climactic as opening day, when your greatest hopes or worst fears are confirmed,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,4368,403,4,149,14902,1567,69,3240],"class_list":["post-646982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas-rangers","tag-baseball","tag-commentary","tag-jacob-degrom","tag-mlb","tag-rangers","tag-skip-schumaker","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-texasrangers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116302387058548708","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}