Jacob deGrom fails to record a strikeout for the 1st time in his MLB career

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Jacob deGrom had a start like no other he’s ever had in the major leagues. The two-time Cy Young Award winner didn’t strike out a batter for the first time in his career.

“I actually didn’t know that. I heard it when I walked inside, but they were aggressive early,” deGrom said after going 5 1/3 innings for the Texas Rangers in his 229th career game, a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday.

It was the first loss in the past seven starts for the 36-year-old deGrom (4-2), who has made 11 starts overall this season after missing most of the last two years following his second Tommy John surgery.

Daulton Varsho hit a solo homer in the first inning, and the only other run deGrom allowed came on a sacrifice fly. He gave up five hits and walked two before manager Bruce Bochy pulled him in the sixth after 81 pitches.

“They were putting a lot of balls in play early. So I was like, oh man, I might be able to go deep in this game … let’s see how deep I can go in this and try to keep them off the board,” deGrom said. “Fighting myself, started yanking the ball, walked a couple guys, just wasn’t very efficient.”

Meanwhile, Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman threw 72 of his 96 pitches for strikes — with first-pitch strikes to 26 of the 29 batters he faced for a career-high 89.7%. His first 14 pitches were strikes, and he needed only 12 of those to get through the first two innings.

Gausman (5-4) struck out six in eight innings, with all his punchouts coming after Wyatt Langford’s one-out homer in the fourth. Two of the strikeouts came when the right-hander retired three consecutive batters after Texas opened the fifth with back-to-back bloop singles.

“We got some good jam shots early in the game,” Gausman said. “Being able to pound those guys so early in the game in, it opened up for them chasing later in the game.”

As for pulling deGrom in a 2-1 game, Bochy said he wanted to lighten the load on a pitcher who threw 103 pitches over seven innings against the New York Yankees last Wednesday and at least 90 pitches in each of his two starts before that.

“He’s been working pretty hard,” Bochy said. “It’s what we thought this game would be, a tight ballgame, two really, really good pitchers going out there. They came out on the good end. … Jacob was good, their guy was really good.”

DeGrom has 1,728 career strikeouts, and entered Monday’s game with a 30.9% career strikeout rate. He had multiple strikeouts in all but one of his previous 228 starts, at Philadelphia on Sept. 16, 2020, when he had only one strikeout before exiting after two innings with a right hamstring spasm. That was 10 days after he struck out 12 Phillies in a game.

There are no physical issues this time, and deGrom said he hasn’t even thought about his workload — 63 1/3 innings through 11 starts. He threw only 64 1/3 innings during his final season with the New York Mets in 2022, when he didn’t make his first big league start until Aug. 2 after being shut down late in spring training because of a stress reaction in his right scapula.

The right-hander threw just 41 innings combined the past two seasons after signing a $185 million, five-year contract with Texas in free agency.

“I feel good. I was just fighting myself today, flying open,” deGrom said. “It’s something I’ve been working on almost every start. And today, it kind of took a step in the wrong direction. So I wasn’t able to really locate down and pitch off that with my slider.”

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB