DeGrom fails to record a strikeout in career first

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Jacob deGrom had a start like no other he has ever had in the major leagues. The two-time Cy Young Award winner didn't strike out a batter for the first time in his career.

"I actually didn't know that. I heard it when I walked inside, but they were aggressive early," deGrom said after going 5 innings for the Texas Rangers in his 229th career game, a 2-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday.

According to Elias Sports Bureau research, deGrom's 228 career games with a strikeout to start his career marked the 10th-longest streak by any pitcher since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893. The only active players with longer such streaks are Aaron Nola (277) and Zack Wheeler (270). Dwight Gooden's streak of 349 consecutive appearances with a strikeout to start his career is the longest such streak over that span.

It was the first loss in the past seven starts for the 36-year-old deGrom (4-2), who has made 11 starts overall this season after missing most of the past two years following his second Tommy John surgery.

Daulton Varsho hit a solo homer in the first inning, and the only other run deGrom gave up came on a sacrifice fly. He gave up five hits and walked two before manager Bruce Bochy pulled him in the sixth after 81 pitches.

"They were putting a lot of balls in play early. So I was like, oh man, I might be able to go deep in this game ... let's see how deep I can go in this and try to keep them off the board," deGrom said. "Fighting myself, started yanking the ball, walked a couple guys, just wasn't very efficient."

Meanwhile, Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman threw 72 of his 96 pitches for strikes -- with first-pitch strikes to 26 of the 29 batters he faced for a career-high 89.7%. His first 14 pitches were strikes, and he needed only 12 of those to get through the first two innings.

Gausman (5-4) struck out six in eight innings, with all of his punchouts coming after Wyatt Langford's one-out homer in the fourth. Two of the strikeouts came when the right-hander retired three consecutive batters after Texas opened the fifth with back-to-back bloop singles.

"We got some good jam shots early in the game," Gausman said. "Being able to pound those guys so early in the game in, it opened up for them chasing later in the game."

As for pulling deGrom in a 2-1 game, Bochy said he wanted to lighten the load on a pitcher who threw 103 pitches over seven innings against the New York Yankees last Wednesday and at least 90 pitches in each of his two starts before that.

"He's been working pretty hard," Bochy said. "It's what we thought this game would be, a tight ballgame, two really, really good pitchers going out there. They came out on the good end. ... Jacob was good, their guy was really good."

DeGrom has 1,728 career strikeouts, and entered Monday's game with a 30.9% career strikeout rate. He had multiple strikeouts in all but one of his previous 228 starts, at Philadelphia on Sept. 16, 2020, when he had only one strikeout before exiting after two innings because of a right hamstring spasm. That was 10 days after he struck out 12 Phillies in a game.