Texas Rangers: 5 Issues affecting the Texas Rangers

#2 Issue Affecting the Texas Rangers: Starting Pitching Downturn

The news about Jacob deGrom was announced on Tuesday June 6th and he had elbow surgery earlier this week. He will miss the rest of the season and likely most of next season. I do believe this pitching staff was overperforming through the month of May as there was the expectation that deGrom would be back in June. Players wanted to do what they could to help keep the team afloat until he got back. It worked the Rangers had one of their best months in team history. It does seem like the deGrom news was like air being let out of a balloon. Dunning has started to regress back to where he was in 2022, Perez has reverted back to pre-2022 form, Heaney has been inconsistent, and now Jon Gray was scratched from his start on Tuesday due to blisters. All of this has happened very suddenly and has really tested the organizational pitching depth.

This team will have real issues going forward if the back half of this rotation is unreliable. I think we know what we are going to get with Nathan Eovaldi and Jon Gray. The team needs steady production from Perez, Dunning, and Heaney if they are going to stay in the race to win the AL West. The rotation's ability to give the Rangers a chance to win every game is what allowed the team to race out to a 40-20 start. It is what has also kept them from building on that start. Dunning 5 walks on Monday, Perez seven runs allowed in 3 1/3 innings, and Heaney four runs allowed in his last start against Tampa. The Rangers' formula to win relies on getting a good performance from their starting pitcher that night. When the starters pitch well the team normally wins.