As Texas Rangers star Jacob deGrom made his spring training debut several days ago, it has been a frustrating road thus far, suffering from several injuries that have set him back. With deGrom looking to get ready for the Rangers' Opening Day, there seems to be a new plan for the pitcher as he looks to have his healthiest season in many years.

In deGrom's peak years with the New York Mets, there was arguably no pitcher better than him who threw as fast and commanded the ball at an effective rate. Especially when he came to Texas and as he got older, he couldn't hold up in terms of velocity as his seasons got shorter due to Tommy John surgery and elbow injuries.

Now, the 36-year-old is learning when to hold back and not go full force on every pitch, which he has started to do during Spring Training as he said via ESPN.

“I have to look at it like, hey, I can pitch at that velocity [from 2018],” deGrom said. “It is less stress on your body. You get out there and you're throwing pitches at 100 miles an hour for however many pitches it is — it's a lot of stress. It's something that I'm going to look into — using it when I need it, backing off and just trusting that I can locate the ball.”

“I wasn't trying to build anything in a lab,” deGrom said. “My arm got a little long a few years ago, so trying to shorten up the arm path a little bit and sync up my mechanics well is what I've been trying to do.”

Rangers' Jacob deGrom on trusting himself during this process 

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As deGrom had been given many spring training updates from the Rangers, it has been a process to not rush the veteran pitcher to what he was before. Part of that process could be shorter starts to begin the season or innings restrictions, but the comfort level is up to deGrom, has he mentioned he wants to make as many starts as I can.”

“I think it's going to be a monitor of stressful innings versus not,” deGrom said. “You have those games where you go five innings, you have 75 pitches, but you've got runners all over the place, so those are stressful. Whereas you cruise and you end up throwing 100 pitches and you had one or two runners. It's like, OK, those don't seem to be as stressful. So I think it's monitoring all of that and just playing it by ear how the season goes.”

“It's always a thing of trusting your stuff,” deGrom continued. “It's one of the hardest things to do in this game, and part of it's the fear of failure. You throw a pitch at 93 when you could have thrown it at 98 and it's a homer, you're like, ‘Why did I do that?' So that's the part that gets tough. You still have to go out there and trust your stuff, know that you can locate and change speeds, and still get outs not full tilt the whole time.”

At any rate, Texas looks to improve after finishing last season 78-84 which put them third in the AL West and replicate the season before where they won the World Series.