What is happening? Welcome to the Plus Pitch Podcast. Your morning pitching podcast from

PitcherList.com. My name is Nick Pollack. Today is January 15th and yes, we are going to talk

about baseball. It's the Rangers. We're going to talk about the Texas Rangers and I'll be honest

with you. I was really, really surprised when looking into the prospects that they have on their

team. There are some absurdly exciting ones, and I don't know how many will see this year.

It might be until next year, but the way that the Rangers are crafted as a team, I'm excited

for what we're going to get this year for them.

I'm shocked to say it. There are some weird

obstacles and let's talk about it. But one won't be Jacob de Grom. And what I mean by that is

he's going to be starting as much as he possibly can and we don't expect it to be 200

innings. I'm not going to go a long time on Jacob de Grom. I'm going to say it's very quickly. Health is the hardest thing for us to

predict. And those that are saying that, oh, no, he's not going to pitch. He's not going to be good.

All that stuff. I think you guys are wrong because he came back from 2023, sorry, from

20203, entered last year for three starts in 2024. And he had his A plus stuff. It was super high PLVs, super hard fastballs, amazing sliders,

etc. It looked like DeGrom hadn't left at all really and he was babyed and he wasn't

really going all out. It was Jacob deGrom. Right. So the concern that he's come back from

a second Tommy John and he won't have the same ability.

That's gone.

The question is the longevity.

And there is an argument to be made that Jacob deGrom is healthier than a fair number of other options out there,

considering that his elbow is now fully repaired.

He has not had a truly healthy season since 2019.

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