Jacob deGrom, the greatest pitcher of this generation, choked back emotion.
. Injury concerns clouded his time with Texas from his first spring training workout, and
And yet, already in his relative absence, the Rangers had ascended to the top of their division, 20 games over .500 and the second-best record in Major League Baseball by the time deGrom spoke to reporters June 6. As of Tuesday, they’re still rolling along with the fourth-best record in baseball, sitting five games up in the AL West.
Even before this past offseason had officially begun, Young — a former pitcher who retired from playing just six years ago — set about turning a team that still had low statistical expectations into a contender, starting with respectability. First, he brought three-time World Series-winning manager Bruce Bochy out of retirement. Then, to oversee what would be an overhauled pitching staff, he brought in Mike Maddux, who was coming off five years coaching for the St. Louis Cardinals.
“That's not the reason that we signed him — we wanted the best pitcher in the world — but that was something that had an impact on the rest of our free agency, no doubt about it. And I think it also elevated the mentality of everybody in here, everybody in our organization, and the expectations: This team can win.”
“I felt like they were going to be the team I was going to sign with,” Eovaldi said last weekend in New York, “and then they ended up signing deGrom. And it was like, talks died down pretty much to nothing, and then they signed Andrew Heaney, and I was like, ‘Man, they just added two huge pieces to the rotation, spent a lot of money. There's no way I'm gonna go over there.’”
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