Demarcus “D-Train” Evans made his much-anticipated major league debut last night in Anaheim.
D-Train was slightly D-railed. Two batters in, it was a D-saster.
Evans earned the nickname D-Train because he’s built like a locomotive. The twenty-three-year-old right-hander is 6’5” and 265 pounds.
The Rangers drafted Evans in the twenty-fifth round in 2015 out of high school in Mississippi. He also had offers to play football. He breezed through the minor leagues, racking up strikeouts like they were pork chops, hanging up 203 strikeouts in 116 minor league innings, to a 1.32 ERA.
With his 98-mile-per-hour fastball, Evans is viewed as the Rangers closer of the future. The only drawback is his command. Justin Upton will attest to that.
Last night, in his major league debut, he gave up a laser beam home run to the first batter he faced, Albert Pujols, then drilled the next batter, Justin Upton, with a fastball to the head. Any time you see a player take one up there it’s scary.
D-Train got the next batter to line to center, and the following batter to ground into a double play to get out of it.
Evan is a likeable kid with a million-dollar smile and a ten-million-dollar arm.
Now that he has the callup jitters out of the way, let’s see if the big man has the stuff to succeed in the big leagues.
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TODAY’S GAME:
Lance Lynn (6-2, 2.40) vs. Andrew Heaney (4-3, 4.02)
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