G99: It’s the Taylor Tegarden show as Rangers win 1-0

That headline is really unfair to Vicente Padilla, Eddie Guardado, & CJ Wilson, but I think most people will remember Taylor Teagarden most in this game.
Heck, Taylor got his first caught stealing throw in the majors. He got his first major league hit, which also happened to be a home run. Said home run was also the lone run in this game, and broke up a perfect game bid at the time by Minnesota starter Scott Baker. How cool was all that? It was quite a moment, and he didn’t visibly smile enough for my tastes. :)
Baker certainly personified the concept of “hard luck loss” in this one – no doubt.
This looked like the Vicente Padilla we’ve been seeing all season – going after guys, and not nibbling. His last two outings before this one were the ones where he was presumably hurt, and it’s nice to see him bounce back to his old 2008 self when coming off the DL. Hopefully he stays that way.
Despite the win, I’m a bit surprised at how underwhelming our offense was in this series in Minnesota. For all three games COMBINED we had a total of just three runs (one was zero, too) and eleven hits. Blech. It’s like we went to sleep. That was a horrendous performance. If it wasn’t for our pitching on Sunday, we would have been swept out of Minnesota, and quite frankly, the way we were hitting, we probably deserved that.
Having said all of that, it was quite nice to see Taylor Teagarden have such a cool day. Makes you wonder if that’s it for him for awhile, given our catcher heavy situation right now.