ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Texas Rangers pitcher Jacob deGrom left Thursday night’s start against the Los Angeles Angels after two innings because of right triceps fatigue and will undergo an MRI on Friday.
“I’m not too concerned,” deGrom said following a 7-0 loss to the Angels. “I mean, hopefully I’ll make my next (start). We’ll see. It was tight in the second inning, and it just didn’t want to loosen up,
so I don’t know, I haven’t really had this before.”
The 38-year-old right-hander, who has been dealing with a left hip and glute injury since the All-Star break, escaped a two-on, one-out jam in the first but gave up two runs and five hits during a 32-pitch second. He was replaced by right-hander Peyton Gray to begin the third with the Angels leading 2-0.
It was the first time deGrom permitted five hits in an inning since Sept. 5, 2017, with the New York Mets.
“I wasn’t going to risk it once I heard (it was) the triceps,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “Obviously, you don’t want to hear anything arm-related. You pull a guy out in the second inning, it’s concerning. But we’ll figure it out when he gets some imaging. We won’t know until they get in there.”
This seven-game road trip began with the Rangers placing pitcher Nathan Eovaldi on the 15-day injured list because of elbow inflammation Monday. Texas beat the Angels 4-1 that night but lost the next three games to fall to 60-62 and two games behind first-place Houston in the AL West.
Now, the Rangers might have to navigate the next few weeks without their two best starting pitchers.
“Our starting pitching has taken a hit, that is reality,” Schumaker said. “With two guys going down, we’ll see what it looks like, but it’s never easy when you’re No. 1 and No. 2 guys are down.”
A two-time Cy Young Award winner, deGrom allowed six hits, struck out three and walked one. He needs two strikeouts to become the ninth active pitcher and 94th in major league history to reach 2,000.
In three starts against the Angels this season, deGrom has yielded 10 earned runs in 10 innings.
“It was very disappointing,” he said of Thursday night's start. “I needed to go out there and give us some length and wasn’t able to do it. I said I could probably keep going, and they said, ‘Well, we’re not going to risk this right now,’ so we’ll just see how it is tomorrow and I’ll go from there.”
One of baseball’s best pitchers when healthy, deGrom made at least 31 starts per season and pitched to a 2.53 ERA across 622 1/3 innings from 2017-19 with the Mets.
He won NL Cy Young Awards with New York in 2018 and 2019 and led the National League with 255 strikeouts in 2019 and 104 strikeouts during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
But deGrom made only 35 starts because of injuries from 2021-24 and underwent his second Tommy John surgery in June 2023, which sidelined him for much of his first two seasons with Texas in 2023 and 2024.
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Texas Rangers starting pitcher Jacob Degrom (48) throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman)
Texas Rangers starting pitcher Jacob Degrom (48) throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death for a 1995 murder Wednesday, media witnesses said, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal of what would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution for a killing she committed at age 18 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start. Officials then attempted to go ahead with it as planned.
Officials appeared to give Pike two doses of pentobarbital.
At 7:46 p.m. prison officials closed the curtain to the media room. They raised the curtain three minutes later. Pike could be heard loudly snoring, and the curtain was closed again at 8:06 pm.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Tennessee Department of Correction spokesman Dorinda Carter told media witnesses she was unable to immediately provide information about what happened.
Emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.
Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and district court.
The motion also asserted that the Department of Correction should begin lifesaving measures. “Failure to provide such care constitutes deliberate indifference to legitimate, serious medical needs.”
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit court’s handling of the case and “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.”
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler.
“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her attorneys wrote in a filing.
As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.
Slemmer’s mother said she wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.
Martinez said her daughter's age also should matter in deciding Pike's fate.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it is difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, in 2023, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021 the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that it put a female inmate to death.
Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)
This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)
