Angels’ Reid Detmers displays good and bad in final start of season

ANAHEIM — The final start of the season for Reid Detmers was a perfect summation of his 2024. He showed both why he’s had so much trouble this season, and also why the Angels still believe he can be a frontline pitcher.

Detmers gave up four runs in five innings, and the Angels lost, 5-2, to the Texas Rangers on Friday night.

In between allowing those runs on three homers, though, Detmers struck out 12 – equaling his career high – and walked one.

“There’s a lot more positives than negatives, but obviously the negatives stand out more,” Detmers said. “That’s really it.”

Detmers gave up homers to Carson Kelly (fastball down the middle), Adolis Garcia (hanging slider) and Wyatt Langford (hanging changeup). Otherwise, he had the Rangers’ hitters flailing, including whiffs on 44% of their swings against his slider.

Detmers finished his season with a 6.75 ERA in 17 major league starts, to go with a 5.54 ERA in 14 Triple-A starts. His combined 164⅔ innings is a career high.

In his five starts since returning from Triple-A, Detmers had a disappointing 8.14 ERA, to go with an encouraging 39 strikeouts in 24⅓ innings.

Detmers said improved fastball command has been the key to so many strikeouts lately.

“Getting the fastball down in the zone has helped a lot,” Detmers said. “Instead of everything being up, now they have to see stuff being down and up, so that opens things up a little bit.”

The Angels still have Detmers, 25, under control for four more seasons, so they’d love to see him figure out what he needs to be consistent. He pitched a no-hitter in his 11th major league start, in 2022. Since then he has bounced between months-long stretches of pitching brilliantly and horribly.

This year’s three-month stint at Triple-A was the low point.

“He got an awakening,” Manager Ron Washington said. “He’s a major league pitcher, and he had to spend some time in the minor leagues because he just couldn’t get his game together. Came up and got it together. Still see some things you need to work on, and that’s keeping the ball down in the zone and making better pitches in certain situations. But he showed you what he’s made of and he showed you what he can do. Five innings and he struck out 12. That’s usually kind of stuff the guy he faced does.”

The guy he was facing on Friday was Jacob deGrom, a two-time Cy Young Award winner.

Although deGrom was making just his third start since returning from a second Tommy John surgery, Washington still expected a tough game.

“That’s Jacob deGrom,” Washington said before the game. “And when you mention Jacob DeGrom’s name, it’s something special. Sometimes a guy like that, that’s half of what he is, is sometimes better than a lot of people.”

Even if it was half of deGrom, he was facing a lineup that was less than half of what the Angels planned.

Taylor Ward and Brandon Drury were the only two players from the Opening Day lineup who started.

Zach Neto (shoulder) and Nolan Schanuel (leg) were both hurt and Logan O’Hoppe and Mickey Moniak each had the day off.

Jack López had a pair of doubles against deGrom, and he scored on an Eric Wagaman single in the first. Niko Kavadas drove in a run with a double in the fifth.

Kavadas also came up just a few feet shy of a two-run homer in the second inning.

“The kids weren’t afraid,” Washington said. “I don’t even think they knew they were facing Jacob deGrom. We just couldn’t sustain anything.”