deGrom’s Secret Weapon: Can He Silence the Tigers’ Roar?

From, let’s say, April, until August, Saturday’s aren’t exactly dominated by sports. Sure, there are still sports on, but it isn’t the “glued to your seat” style of college football and college basketball. I’ve said that baseball isn’t really the sport that you want to watch a game between any two teams. Usually, you want a rooting interest for a team, or at least a good pitching matchup. We got a great pitching matchup specifically in this game between the Rangers and the Tigers. 

The Rangers are climbing and fighting to find a way above .500. The team hasn’t really been the same since winning the World Series two seasons ago. That year they were great on offense. Their pitching wasn’t amazing, but it was good enough. This year the Rangers offense is struggling quite a bit, hitting just .232 and they’ve only scored about three runs per game. It seems like they don’t score unless they hit home runs. As of Friday, they had 123 runs and 33 homers. Those aren’t all solo shots, so my estimate is that about 50% of their scoring comes from the longball. I guess that’s normal for teams, but they just aren’t scoring enough in general. It might not matter today with Jacob deGrom on the mound. deGrom has been one of the best pitchers in baseball for years, but injuries have derailed him. For the season, he is 2-1 with a 2.61 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP. He has only allowed 11 earned runs this season, and seven of them have come in two starts. The Tigers are just 5-for-30 against deGrom with Javy Baez going just 3-for-17 with 10 strikeouts.

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