ANAHEIM -- The frustration was palpable in the Rangers clubhouse on Monday night.
This is the kind of game they feel like they should win. That’s how you feel every time Jacob deGrom takes the mound. Frustration doesn’t usually follow it.
In a week’s time, deGrom and Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi will be teammates on the American League All-Star team for the Midsummer Classic in Atlanta. But as they battled to open a four-game, American League West set, neither factored into the decision after both were tagged for multiple runs early on.
It was a back-and-forth affair, but the Rangers were eventually walked off, 6-5, in the bottom of the ninth inning when reliever Hoby Milner issued a bases-loaded walk to Nolan Schanuel.
So yeah, the frustration of the entire night was evident in the clubhouse postgame, as the Rangers have now lost three of their first four games to start the 10-day road trip heading into the All-Star break.
“There's no answer,” Bochy said, briefly after throwing his phone onto his desk. “I'm sorry. I'd like to give you an answer. You keep fighting, and hopefully you come out on the good side of these games. You give them credit. They fought hard, too. We had some guys that have been pitching a lot out there. When you're in games like this, you gotta execute and do some little things, and a couple times we didn’t do it.”
But deGrom had a rare human night well before things crashed and burned for the Rangers.
The Rangers ace, recently named a 2025 All-Star, gave up three runs in five innings, his most surrendered in a single start since April 11. The Angels became the first team to score at least three runs within the first two innings of a game against deGrom since the A's scored four runs in the first inning on Sept. 24, 2022.
“I made a few mistakes in the middle,” deGrom said. “I need to do a better job. I know the bullpen has thrown a lot of innings recently, and I needed to go out there and pitch deeper in that game, and I wasn't able to.
“A lot of stuff was just a ball out of the hand. They were not very competitive pitches. So if it starts a ball, it's pretty easy to take. I wasn't able to locate. I was kind of all over the place. Like I said, I made a few mistakes, and they capitalized on it. I didn't do a very good job tonight.”
That snapped deGrom's streak of 14 consecutive starts of five or more innings and two or fewer runs, which was the longest streak in franchise history (since 1961). It was also the longest streak by an AL pitcher since Seattle’s Felix Hernández had a 17-game streak in 2014.
“I felt fine,” deGrom reiterated. “I just wasn't able to throw the ball where I wanted to. I was yanking the slider off the plate almost all night, the changeup wasn’t very good, the fastball was kind of all over the place. All around, just not a good job.”
The Rangers -- who entered the day hitting .216 with a .610 OPS and a 72 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers -- put up four runs on Kikuchi, including a first-inning, two-run homer from Corey Seager. But they were unable to add on in the middle innings, nor retake the lead later into the game against the Angels bullpen.
“I've always said this: We’ve got to bounce back from adversity,” Bochy said. “Things like this, we have no choice. We have to come out and be ready to go tomorrow. The bats, I thought, were pretty good overall tonight. We have a couple of guys that had some rough ones, but I thought they battled a really good pitcher. … I don't think anybody saw the game [going] like this with two All-Stars, but we battled their guy well. They battled our guy well.”