It took Jacob deGrom 92 pitches to carve out his best start ever as a Ranger.

It took Jakob Junis 10 pitches to flush it all down the drain. 

DeGrom wasn’t just great, he was in fact perfect through five innings. He struck out the first five Mariners, eight of the first nine Mariners, 10 of the first 15 Mariners. Ten Ks through five innings, with no Mariner hitter making it to first.

The first Seattle hitter in the bottom of the sixth hit a single that grazed deGrom’s glove, then he struck out the next two batters and got out of the sixth with a 3-0 lead, 12 strikeouts, one hit, no walks. It was a gem.

But, in the era of pitch count baseball, deGrom had to come out of the game. The collective exhaling from the Mariners bench could be heard all the way from Seattle.

Jakob Junius took the ball in the bottom of the seventh. He hit Randy Arozarena with his first pitch. Wild pitched him to second with his fourth pitch. Gave up a run-scoring single with his sixth pitch. Gave up another single with his ninth pitch to put runners at first and second. Then his tenth pitch, and first to Julio Rodriguez, ended up over the leftfield wall for a three-run homer. 

Poof.

Just like that, deGrom’s gem turned into cubic zirconia. A 3-0 lead became a 4-3 deficit, which eventually ended that way. 

The Rangers fell to three games under .500 again. And with Houston winning earlier in the day, Texas fell to three games behind Houston, with 15 games left. With the Astros owning the tiebreaker, it means the Rangers need to pick up four games on the Astros in final 15. 

With neither of the two teams ahead of them in the wild card playing yesterday, the Rangers slipped one-half-game further from Cleveland and Toronto.

They head to Phoenix to play the Diamondbacks tonight. They need to sweep Arizona, plain and simple. 

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