A stripped-down pitch mix has revitalized former Stanford Cardinal Cal Quantrill with the Texas Rangers
The past three seasons, former Stanford Cardinal Cal Quantrill has played with four different teams and held a cumulative 5.39 ERA in 74 starts spanning 365 ⅔ innings. He went 16-30 in the process.
This season he has been putting together a resurgent campaign with the Texas Rangers, posting a 3.13 ERA with a 1.15 WHIP across 77 ⅔ innings. He's been thriving while pitching as both a starter and a reliever. This month in four outings (three starts), Quantrill has tossed 19 innings to the tune of a 0.95 ERA, striking out 15 and walking four.
On Tuesday night against the Washington Nationals, Quantrill tossed seven shutout innings, giving up just four hits, no walks, and striking out five. He relied more heavily on his four-seamer, using it 37% of the time last night, up 17% over a typical outing for the right-hander this season.
This spring, Quantrill left the Rangers for three weeks to go pitch for Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic, and the coaching staff didn't feel that they'd received enough time to fully evaluate the righty and give him a spot in the rotation on Opening Day, so he spent the first three starts of his season in Triple-A with Round Rock.
With the Express, he was shelled in his first outing, giving up seven runs in two innings, but in his next two starts he combined for 12 innings and just one run allowed. He was called up to the Rangers roster at that point to serve as the long man out of the bullpen, where he posted an impressive 3.78 ERA across 33 ⅓ innings.
Quantrill made his first start of the season on June 23, and he has been even better in the rotation, posting a 2.64 ERA across 44 ⅓ innings.
The biggest difference for the former Cardinal is that he has refined his pitch mix, going from eight different recorded variations in 2025 to five this season. He's also dropped his slider from the mix after batters hit .409 against it last season.
This year, he's mixing his cutter, sinker, splitter, and four-seamer at very similar usage rates, which makes it tough to know what's coming. He's also dropping in his curveball at a 4.4% clip, which is just enough for it to be a pitch to worry about.
Quantrill has never been a huge strikeout guy, but this season he has rediscovered how to get weak contact — and he's thriving on a team with postseason aspirations.
