Travis d’Arnaud knows Jacob deGrom better than any other catcher in baseball. He caught the hard-throwing right-hander 60 times when they played together with the New York Mets, the most frequent backstop the former Cy Young Award winner has thrown to in his career.
That familiarity did d’Arnaud and the Angels well en route to their 6-5 victory over the Rangers (44-47) on Monday night, in which Nolan Schanuel walked off their American West foes in the ninth inning with a bases-loaded, RBI walk.
The veteran catcher ambushed deGrom in the second inning for a two-run home run, just hitting the ball hard enough — 97.