ARLINGTON – Deep, slow breaths. Deep, slow breaths. 

Jacob deGrom left Tuesday’s start after only five innings, but the issue was not his arm and he does not believe he will miss a start. The cause: Soreness in the upper leg/hip area. It’s something deGrom has battled between starts in the past. The difference: It lingered this time, causing him to cut his pre-game bullpen short a bit to save what he had for the game.  

And truth be told, save for the typical first-inning slip-up that has ever-so-slightly tainted his season, he looked like he had plenty left. 

“He was fighting the whole game,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “So, for him to give us five innings like he did was really impressive. He gutted it out and provided enough innings. It shows what he’s made of. 

“He was good enough to pitch five innings, and I think he could have probably gone out again, but I just felt like it wasn’t smart with where we’re at in the season to push for one more inning.  Hopefully he will make his next start. I think there’s a really good chance he will, but I have to see where he’s at.” 

DeGrom, who was scratched from his first start of the season with a stiff neck, has made every start since and has started 48 games since the beginning of 2025. While his fastball seemed to tick down a bit as he got to the fifth inning, the bigger issue, he said, was his changeup, for which he felt off stride due to the leg. The fastball, which averaged 98 mph in the first inning, averaged 96.1 mph by the fifth.   

He compensated by throwing more curveballs than usual. 

“I actually ended up striding a little farther on my changeup, so I wasn’t throwing that very well,” deGrom said. “I didn’t want to just be fastball-slider and then saw the swings I was getting on the curveball and had a pretty good feel for it. [Catcher Elias Diaz] thought the same thing. It worked out to where we were able to use it in some situations where we needed outs.”  

And about that hip/leg?  

“After I pitch, I get sore,” he said. “It just lingered this week. It will be manageable. We’ll be good to go.” 

So, maybe now, you can breathe easier.