deGrom is holding the rope—but Texas is running out of hands to grab it
Eight pitchers on the injured list. That is the number that should follow every conversation about the Rangers' September push, because it reframes everything else. Texas sits 73-72, first in the AL West, four wins from clinching a playoff spot with 17 games left. The rotation looks functional on paper. But functional and sustainable are two very different things when your depth has been systematically dismantled.
The number that actually tells the story is Jacob deGrom's 1.07 WHIP. Not the ERA, not the strikeout rate — the WHIP, because it measures how cleanly he's working, how rarely he's letting the game get complicated on him. At 3.73 ERA with 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings, deGrom isn't just pitching well; he's pitching the way he did in his peak Mets years, the back-to-back Cy Young seasons that made him the most dominant starter of his generation. The difference now is context. Then, a bad deGrom start was an aberration. Now, it's a crisis, because the infrastructure behind him has collapsed.
Nathan Eovaldi at 3.92 and MacKenzie Gore at 4.76 give Texas three rotation arms that can win games. Kumar Rocker at 4.45 rounds out a four-man core that has kept the Rangers afloat. But Jack Leiter is on the 60-day IL. Jose Corniell is on the 60-day IL. Jalen Beeks, Carter Baumler — both gone. Cole Winn and Peyton Gray are on shorter stints, but the bullpen depth those names represent has been hollowed out across the summer. This isn't a rotation with a frayed edge; it's a rotation with a load-bearing wall that's been removed.
What makes deGrom's performance so important — and so fragile as a foundation — is the innings question. He's logged 159.3 innings across 31 starts, which for any other pitcher would be a full, healthy workload. For deGrom, given the injury history that has shadowed his career since his Tommy John surgery and the subsequent years of managed absences, it's a number worth watching carefully. Texas needs him to finish what he's started in September, and they need him to do it without the safety net of a deep staff that could absorb a stumble.
The Rangers' four-game winning streak and 6-4 record over their last ten games suggest the machine is still running. But my read is this: Texas is not a team that can afford deGrom to have two bad starts in the final 17 games. With Eovaldi back healthy and Rocker eating innings, there's enough to survive a rough outing from Gore or Rocker. There is not enough to survive deGrom going sideways. That's an uncomfortable amount of dependence to place on any 37-year-old pitcher in September, even one who is currently throwing like the best version of himself. The Rangers are first in their division. They are also one injury away from a very different conversation.