Thoughts on a 5-2 Rangers win

Rangers 5, Orioles 2

• In deGrom we trust.
• Jacob deGrom had less than ideal Ranger debut. His second start as a Ranger looked much more like the Jacob deGrom we were all expecting to see. deGrom was perfect through four innings before allowing a double to Ryan Mountcastle to start the fifth. A pair of runs scored in the fifth courtesy of a walk, an E4, and a single. deGrom then eliminated the threat of any more runs scoring that inning and kept Baltimore off the board in the sixth.
• The final line for deGrom: 6 IP, 11 Ks, 2 walks, 2 hits, 2 runs, one earned. In 92 pitches deGrom got 25 swinging strikes. That is pretty salty.
• Man, deGrom is fun. Let’s keep him healthy and on the mound. Please.
• So deGrom is deGrom and he’s awesome, but we knew that. The surprise, a week into the season, is the work the bullpen has been doing. The pen took care of business again today, with Will Smith, Jonathan Hernandez and Jose Leclerc combining to throw three shutout innings, no hits, one walk, four Ks.
• So on the year the Rangers relievers have thrown 23.2 innings and have allowed just two runs. That’s not going to last, of course, and it is only six games, and a couple of bad outings would blow the pen ERA up to unrespectability. But so far, so good.
• The bats jumped on Oriole starter Grayson Rodriguez, making his major league debut, early, with an Adolis Garcia RBI double and a Josh Jung RBI single giving Texas a 2-0 lead after one inning. They went cold after that, though, and you started getting that it might be one of those games where there would be eight goose eggs after the crooked number in the first.
• It was Josh Jung to the rescue, though. In the bottom of the sixth, he broke a 2-2 tie, following up an Adolis Garcia single with an opposite field two run bomb. That gave him a two hit, three RBI day…and also, no strikeouts, for those worried about his contact issues.
• Texas padded their lead in the seventh when Nathaniel Lowe doubled off someone named Keegan Akin, bringing home Ezequiel Duran, who led off the inning with a single. They then wisely decided to stop scoring runs so they could save some for a later date.
• Travis Jankowski came into the game for Duran in the eighth, going to center field with Adolis going to right and Robbie Grossman shifting to left field, where Duran had been playing. Leody Taveras is due back in about a week, and I’m starting to think Bubba Thompson will be the odd man out then.
• Jacob deGrom topped out at 100.4 mph on his fastball, and 93.3 mph on his slider. Will Smith hit 92.9 mph on his fastball. Jonathan Hernandez’s sinker touched 97.7 mph. Jose Leclerc got to 94.6 mph on his fastball.
• Nathaniel Lowe had a double at 106.2 mph off the bat. Adolis Garcia had a 102.1 mph single. Robbie Grossman had a groundout at 101.1 mph and a single at 100.2 mph. Josh Jung’s homer was 100.5 mph off the bat.
• It is always good to go into an off day with a win, especially when it is a day game. Texas now heads to Chicago to start a series against the Cubs.