What is the story about?
Rangers
2, Cardinals 1
- Well will you look at that…the Rangers have a winning streak!
- Four games, to be exact.
- That ties the longest winning streak they’ve had this season. They won four in a row in Games 2 through 5 of the season, previously.
- And Jacob deGrom won his 100th career game.
- deGrom is 16th among active pitchers in wins. Fifteenth on the list is his teammate Nathan Eovaldi, who has 107.
- The active win leader list is very clearly tiered. Justin Verlander has 266 career wins, and Max Scherzer has 222. Then you drop all the way to Gerrit Cole and Chris Sale at #3 and #4, with 154 and 153 wins, respectively.
- After Sonny Gray, at 131, you have five guys — Zack Wheeler, Kevin Gausman, Yu Dravish, Jose Quintana and Michael Wacha — all ranging from 115 to 117 wins. Then there’s Carlos Carrasco, Patrick Corbin and Aaron Nola all at 112 wins. Jose Berrios is one ahead of Eovaldi, with 108 wins.
- Eduardo Rodriguez could have gotten to 100 wins on Monday as well, but although he gave up just one run in six innings, the D-Backs didn’t score runs until late in the game, and so a reliever got the win instead. Rodriguez is stuck on 99.
- deGrom also passed Tom Gordon for 108th on the career strikeout list, at 1929. He’s currently three behind Aaron Nola. Bob Welch is currently #100, at 1969 strikeouts. The group between Welch and Nola includes three notable former Rangers — Kenny Rogers, Bobby Witt and Danny Darwin — two Hall of Famers in Whitey Ford and Amos Rusie, and Sonny Gray.
- deGrom was excellent on Monday. He was not quite as efficient as one would have liked, needing 91 pitches just to get through five innings and averaging almost 4 1/2 pitches per batter faced, but the results were nonetheless there.
- Eight Ks, just one walk, just four hits. 18 swings and misses, with six apiece coming on the slider and changeup, and three apiece on the fastball and curve.
- The curve was especially effective against the Cardinals, when he threw it — out of ten curveballs, deGrom got four called strikes, and all three swings against it by St. Louis hitters was a whiff.
- Oh, and no runs allowed by deGrom. His ERA on the season has dropped to 3.48, with a 3.76 xERA and 3.89 FIP.
- Skip Schumaker used four relievers for an inning apiece, with the only baserunner allowed by any of those relievers being the home run Peyton Gray allowed to Masyn Winn.
- And we even got to see Jacob Latz in back-to-back games, after he had pitched just twice in an eighteen day stretch prior to that!
- The middle infield of Ezequiel Duran and Nicky Lopez contributed five of the Rangers’ eight hits in the game, and six of the team’s nine total bases.
- They’re a dynamic duo.
- So here’s something weird…the Rangers stole three bases in this game. It is the first time all season that the Rangers have stolen three bases in a game.
- Texas only has 30 steals all season — tied with the Mets for 24th in the majors — so that was 10% of their season total.
- Joc Pederson had a 106.6 mph groundout. Evan Carter had a 104.9 mph fly out and a 102.9 mph groundout. Brandon Nimmo had a 103.9 mph single and a 101.1 mph GIDP. Jake Burger had a 103.7 mph groundout. Ezequiel Duran had a 103.2 mph double and a 101.4 mph groundout. Alejandro Osuna had a 100.1 mph groundout.
- Jacob deGrom hit 99.2 mph with his fastball, averaging 97.6 mph. Peyton Gray hit 94.1 mph with his fastball. Tyler Alexander’s sinker reached 92.2 mph. Jakob Junis touched 93.6 mph with his sinker. Jacob Latz’s fastball topped out at 96.6 mph.
- Everyone think positive. The winning streak won’t continue if we don’t think positive.
