ARLINGTON — Jacob deGrom’s 38th birthday was Friday. It felt strangely like an offensive exorcism for the Texas Rangers.
deGrom fell into the same pitfall that MacKenzie Gore, Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter fell into earlier in the week — the first inning crooked number. He gave up five runs including a home run.
But, unlike those games earlier in the week, the offense responded.
Texas scored six runs in the bottom of the first, deGrom gutted through five innings and the bullpen protected a slim lead as the Rangers won, 9-7, on Friday at Globe Life Field.
It’s a win one takes as a birthday gift, even if the wrapping paper looks tattered.
“I did a terrible job in the first inning,” deGrom said. “They goal was just to get through as many innings as I could.”
deGrom’s first inning went off script slowly. It built up to a Ty France grand slam that gave the Padres a 5-0 lead. It was the first grand slam deGrom had ever allowed.
It had all the earmarks of the first three games of the week against the Twins. Home run allowed. Crooked number. Rangers loss incoming. After all, Texas was 0-14 when it gave up more than one run in the first inning this season.
Make that 1-14.
Turns out, the Rangers hitters talked about this before the game with manager Skip Schumaker. He asked them for more energy. He asked for a response after three games of not getting one.
“It’s crazy that it happened again and the response was exactly what Skip asked us to do,” third baseman Josh Jung said.
Joc Pederson led off the bottom of the first and an innocuous mistake jump-started Texas. Pederson’s weak grounder to France at first base should have been an easy catch at first base for pitcher Randy Vásquez. But the ball glanced off his glove for an error. Then Jung walk. Then a full-blown explosion.
A Rangers lineup that scored seven total runs in three games against the Twins buried Vásquez for six runs in the first inning, highlighted by two RBI doubles by Alejandro Osuna and Jake Burger. A dribble of a ground ball by catcher Elias Diaz to third base that he managed to beat out scored the go-ahead run.
Whatever works, right?
“That comeback was as good as I’ve been around in the first inning,” Schumaker said.
Of course, the Rangers gave the lead back when France hit another home run off deGrom. But Texas got it back on an RBI double by Wyatt Langford in the fourth inning. Langford later homered. The Rangers are looking for a spark, not style points.
They also needed deGrom to give them as much as possible. For his birthday, deGrom worked overtime. He threw a season-high 106 pitches He grinded through six innings giving up six hits, six runs, three walks and two home runs. He also struck out nine.
After he gave up a walk to Will Warren with two out in the sixth, Schumaker headed to the mound. He said afterward he had considered pulling deGrom the batter before but he wanted to give him the chance to get through six innings. Turns out deGrom wanted it too.
“I looked at Skip and I was like, “I’m good, I’m good,’ and he came out and said ‘You want it?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,” deGrom said.
He got San Diego’s Rodolfo Duran to fly out.
If the first inning was, in deGrom’s own words, “terrible,” the other five innings were, in Jung’s words, “peak deGrom.”
“The fact that he ended up going six innings was gigantic in this stretch and I don’t want that to get lost,” Schumaker said, alluding to the Rangers playing 15 games in 15 days starting on Thursday. “I know what the line looks like, but it could have been a whole lot worse for the whole team. I don’t know if I’ve ever been around a guy that gives up five runs in the first inning and you only have to use two bullpen arms to end the game.”
By game’s end every Rangers starter got on base with 13 hits and five walks. It was the kind of robust offense the Rangers haven’t had enough of this season.
Based on the pre-game meeting, it’s almost as if Schumaker was clairvoyant about Friday and about the future. One night doesn’t fix the Rangers. But it’s a start.
“It’s [giving up multiple runs in the first inning] going to happen again in the next 80 games, so what are we going to do about it?” he said.
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