Quantrill exits Saturday, and the math on Texas's pitching staff gets harder

Cal Quantrill came out of Saturday's game early, and with nine pitchers now on the injured list and 14 games remaining, the Rangers don't have much margin left to absorb another one. Quantrill had been one of the more reliable arms in the bullpen all season — a 2.84 ERA across 111 innings, which is a genuinely useful number for a team that has been patching its staff together since June.

The injury list itself covers the full spectrum of severity. Jack Leiter, Jose Corniell, Carter Baumler, Jalen Beeks, and Cole Winn are all on the 60-day, so none of them are coming back. Peyton Gray and Michel Otanez are on shorter stints, though with two weeks left the calendar is not particularly forgiving there either. The closer's chart has Jacob Latz at the top, with Kumar Rocker and Jakob Junis behind him — a thinner safety net than anyone would draw up.

What makes this strange is that Texas is still 75-74 and sitting first in the AL West. The offense has carried its weight; Josh Jung, Ezequiel Duran, and Jake Burger have all been productive, and deGrom and Eovaldi have given the rotation something to stand on. The team has gone 6-4 over its last 10 games despite all of it.

Fourteen games is not a lot of runway, and losing Quantrill — even temporarily — tightens the bullpen picture considerably. The next week or so will tell us whether this staff has enough left to hold what it has.