{"id":424003,"date":"2026-09-02T14:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424003\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T14:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:26:19","slug":"new-wrinkle-in-degroms-arsenal-making-rangers-ace-less-predictable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424003\/","title":{"rendered":"New wrinkle in deGrom’s arsenal making Rangers’ ace less predictable"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON \u2014 Rangers<\/a> manager Skip Schumaker often offers the phrase “vintage Jacob deGrom<\/a>” when his ace turns back the clock, and in Monday’s 8-1 win vs. the Athletics at Globe Life Field<\/a>, he did something that he hadn’t done since he was a perennial award frontrunner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two-time Cy Young award winner threw a season-high 11 sinkers vs. the Athletics and utilized his rarely-used pitch to record one of his best starts this season. He used his sinker to elicit a groundout from outfielder Henry Bolte in the first inning, a strikeout from first baseman Tommy White in the second and a double-play groundball from designated hitter Max Muncy in the at-bat after that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old hadn’t thrown that many sinkers in a game since Aug. 28, 2018 vs. the Chicago Cubs and he hadn’t recorded a strikeout on the pitch since March 28, 2019 vs. the Washington Nationals. He believed that there were a few hitters in the Athletics lineup that his sinker “would be useful to throw to,” and after he threw it a few times in his pregame bullpen with catcher Danny Jansen, he felt that it was good enough to deploy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I had a good feel for it in the bullpen and I was locating it well,” deGrom, who went six seasons without the use of his sinker before he threw one in his first start this year, said. “I said to Danny, ‘Danny, we can run it off to some of those lefties, especially if we throw them a backdoor slider, run a sinker off, just kind of a change in the look of how I normally pitch.’ Having the good feel for it, I was confident throwing it tonight.”<\/p>\n

It’s all part of deGrom’s plan to be less predictable on the mound after hitters began to slug his usually lethal four-seam fastball earlier this season. He’s thrown fewer fastballs this season (41.8% of all pitches) than any season in his career, lowered his slider usage (36.9%) to below career averages, used his changeup more than he has in six seasons (12.9%) and has now thrown a sinker into the mix. He threw his fastball 43% of the time in his first 10 starts and yielded a .924 OPS with it, but in the 16 starts since, he’s cut the percentage to 40% and yielded a .792 OPS with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If you mix in something else every now and then, and throw the ball like he did today with the sinker, utilize it, struck a guy out, got a couple of ground balls,”\u00a0Schumaker said, “now they have to think about something different.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON \u2014 Rangers manager Skip Schumaker often offers the phrase “vintage Jacob deGrom” when his ace turns back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,1638,89415,91832,89898],"class_list":["post-424003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-brief","tag-tp-globe-life-field","tag-tp-jacob-degrom","tag-tp-skip-schumaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}