Recently in 2006 Game Recaps Category

Well, the season is over now. We finished under .500 again, going 80-82 and finishing third again. I suppose it's something that we didn't finish last. But it's not much of something. I have to admit I barely paid attention to any of the Seattle games this weekend, so I'll have just a short update for the games. I'll probably take a break from updating for awhile like I usually do during the playoffs. That is unless we make a managerial change, which seems like a possibility from reading the various local media.

G160: Rangers win Friday night, 6-5 over Mariners: Vicente Padilla only went 5.1 innings this game, but really threw a LOT of pitches for that few innings. His pitch count was 118! He got the win, but really was not anything remotely close to dominating by the looks of the box score. Feldman, Rheinecker, Francisco, Littleton, & CJ Wilson all relieved. In fact, Wilson got his first save of the year. Offensively, we got three more doubles (2 Young, 1 Tex) and a bunch of singles (nothing more than a double in this one) to account for our 6 runs. [ Game Recap on mlb.com ]

G161: Rangers lose to Mariners, 3-1: Kevin Millwood turned in another quality start this game, going six innings, giving up three runs on 6 hits with no walks. But it wasn't enough, as Felix Hernandez of the Mariners only gave up one run in his seven innings of work. In fact, the lone Rangers run was a solo home run by Mark Teixeira in the seventh. The Seattle pen threw two more innings of scoreless relief to keep the three runs enough for Seattle to get the win. Millwood ended up with a record of 16-12. Not bad. Would have liked to have seen 17-19, but 16 isn't all that bad, I s'pose. [ Game Recap on mlb.com ]

G162: Rangers lose to Mariners in season finale, 3-2: Robinson Tejeda took the hill in the finale of the 2006 season for Texas. He went 5 innings, gave up three runs, including two solo home runs. Not great, but "OK". In fact, the only two runs we got were like yesterday's game, on the longball. Our two came way of a two run home run by Ian Kinsler in the second inning. We actually outhit Seattle, 10-7, but could only push across runs on Kinsler's longball. A slightly annoying way to end the season from the looks of the box score (I didn't see any of this game, I was involved with church stuff all day). [ Game Recap on mlb.com ]

I think this picture of Rod Barajas in the finale on Sunday pretty much sums it up:

I have to admit, I didn't watch this game. I could have, but I didn't. I came home from my bowling league, and the game was just starting, and I just wasn't interested. I'm ready for the offseason. A few notes from what little I did see, though.

Long time Ranger nemesis did it to us again in the first inning. That would be Tim Salmon's first inning HR. Fortunately it will be his final one, as we don't play the Angels anymore in 2006, and he's retiring after this season.

My gut feeling is that Adam Eaton has played his last game in a Ranger uniform. I have no facts at all to base that off of, it's just a "feeling".

Mark Teixeira has definitely killed the first half slump he had. He had two home runs tonight which accounted for all 5 of our runs. Take Tex's home runs out, and we have seven hits, no runs.

While I didn't see it, an Angels lead did make for one good thing. No darned Rally Monkey!

Early on, this game looked like it was going to be a "revenge" kind of game. We lose a few, and then beat the crap out of an opponent. We put up a two spot in the first inning on a Mark Teixeira home run. We then put up three more in the second inning on the strength of four consecutive hits off of Kelvim Escobar. In fact, all our second inning runs were on singles. So we're up 5-0 after two innings, and feeling pretty good. However, that was it. We figured out Escobar immediately. However, the remainder of the Anaheim relievers (three of 'em) didn't allow us any more runs, and also held us to four hits over the 7.1 innings they tossed.

It's fortunate then that Robinson Tejeda pitched like the guy he's always been touted to be. 6.2IP, one earned run, no walks. The one run was a solo home run to Rivera. Ron Mahay did give up another run, but that was all. A great performance by us. The World Baseball Classic has raised it's head at the end of the season here, as word out of the team is that they were worried about Otsuka's workload, going back into the spring. Due to this, Wes Littleton got his first major league save, a two inning affair in that department.

Four to go and then we start rooting against the Yankees for real.

The Rangers had eight hits.
The Angels had eighteen hits.

The Rangers had three runs.
The Angels had eight runs.

Vlad Guerrero had two home runs.
The Texas Rangers had none.

On the less sarcastic side, Joaquin Arias got his first major league start (at short). He went 2-3, which makes his major league batting average .750 now. Michael Young got his 100th RBI of the season, which was a positive.

It was a disheartening game. Uno on my Xbox 360 had more of a draw this night.

Kevin Millwood ended the home 2006 season the same way he started it. On the mound in Arlington, getting beat pretty well.

Apr 02: 5IP, 7H, 5ER, 1BB, 3K
Sep 24: 4.2IP, 7H, 6ER, 5BB, 6K

Most of us remember the bad home opener, the finale was actually worse. Thing is I was at this game. It was frickin long! I don't have the inning breakdowns in front of me, but I had a committment in the evening that I could not be late for, and my drop dead have to leave time was 4:15. Game started at one. After about 4 innings, I realized I would not be seeing the whole game - boy was this a slow one! The official time was 3:27, but it felt way longer than that. The last 2.5 innings went by pretty quickly, but if they had the pace of the others, it probably would have been about a 4:15 game. I ended up leaving right around the top of the 8th, and I didn't miss anything, except some more sun - it was a georgeous day. Sunshine, 70 degrees. Really awesome weather.

One interesting thing is that Carlos Lee got booed pretty well. There was a ball that dropped in front of him for an out which he didn't make a lot of effort to get. Then there was the ball he DID dive for which got past him for an inside the park home run. After the inside the parker, he got booed, and he got booed pretty loudly the next time up to the plate (which I think was a groundout to short). Lee's got a great bat, but he's like the second coming of Juan Gonzalez. Great offense, a liability on defense, though. Take some of that money you'd spend on Carlos Lee, and give it to Matthews, and some pitching. I think that's a better way to deal with Carlos Lee. I always saw him as a renter, anyway.

Felt bad for Ron Mahay, he came into the game, and immediately got hit with a batted ball, and had to come out. Hopefully no long term injury comes from that.

Was nice to see Brian Sikorski still pitching, I remember well his performance against the Yankees in a Rangers uniform about 6 years ago or so.

Not good to have a losing record at home. We had something like 70 less home runs this year over last? Oh well. At least I got my 2007 pocket schedule. :)

Vicente Padilla did not pitch like the recent Padilla vintage on Saturday night. Recently, he's been pretty darn dominating, if not totally lights out. Tonight he pitched like Mark Clark. He did go five innings, but was pretty ineffective, giving up 8 hits plus three walks for a total of six earned runs. he also gave up a home run (Peralta). Definitely not like the guy who's been wearing #44 recently. Feldman, Rupe, & Rhienecker combined for 4 innings of scoreless relief, but it wasn't enough.

On the flip side, the Indians starting pitcher only went four, but was way more effective than Padilla was. Brian Slocum threw four innings of one run ball, giving up four hits and two walks. But from what I saw of this game, he was definitely the better pitcher. He didn't earn the win obviously, but the Cleveland pen threw an additional 5 innings, giving up just two more runs late.

We were pretty much not in the game. In fact, if you took Mark Teixeira out of the box score, we had only four hits. Tex went 4-4 himself, scoring twice.

Another loss as we head to the end of the season, not really learning much of anything about our possible 2007 rotation from the hurlers already wearing our uniform in 06.

There were only three home games left in the season. I've been sick the last two days, and while I wasn't feeling great, I felt OK enough to go, especially since there were really no more games left to "make up" if I missed this one. It was also a giveaway night, this was the annual Rangers calendar, the second year in a row they gave away a "pet" calendar. I actually take umbrage at that, because it's not much of a "pet" calendar. It should be a "dog" calendar. As I'm a cat person, that always bugs me. Other than Kameron Loe's snake, this was wall to wall dogs. And a couple of them are butt ugly, too. Anyway, I wish John Wetteland was still around, as he was one of the cat people from last year's calendar giveaway. They also gave away a nice card with this picture from the 2006 All Star game on it, and on the back side, they had the preliminary 2007 schedule that was released the day before. I'll have more to say on the schedule shortly, but it was a nice little card. They also had the traditional advance pocket schedule, which I'll be scanning and getting on my pocket schedule page on Monday when I get back to work and have access to a flatbed scanner.

Anyway, we got out to an early lead, 1-0 in the first on a Mark Teixeira single, scoring Matthews, who will set a club record for RBI and runs scored by a leadoff hitter before the end of the season, I'm sure (I'm saying that w/o looking it up, but I'm pretty sure on that). The Indians tied it back up in the top of the second on a double by Hector Luna. Luna was thrown out at third on great throws by Nelson Cruz & Michael Young to end the inning. It stayed that way until the bottom of the third when the Rangers took the lead again on two absolute no doubt home runs by Mark Texeira (into the bleachers in Sec 50 right over the end of the Rangers bullpen), and one titanic shot by Carlos Lee who hit the wall behind the seats in left. I was sitting in Section 13, and Lee's ball went right by me, so I got a good view of it. Was very impressive. That put us up 4-1. It didn't stop there, we scored four in the fourth. They were all unearned, based on an error that really looked like an error to me, but could have been ruled a double for Gary Matthews.

We were up 8-1 at that point, and pretty much cruised to the win. Carlos Lee had another home run later in the game (the earlier one was a back to back with Tex). One interesting thing about Lee's home runs. He has eight of them as a Ranger, and they've all been solo home runs. Mark Teixeira had 4 RBI total tonight, driving his season total to 104.

Adam Eaton looked great until he hit this "wall" in the sixth. Once he starts to sniff 100 pitches, he seems to run out of gas. I think he's had enough starts sine coming back where that should not be an issue. I'm still advocating resigning him for 2007, but this "100 pitch wall" of his is a troubling sign. Hopefully a healthy offseason will help in that regard.

Was a fun game to attend, even if I didn't feel very good. I'll be there again on Sunday for the home finale, too. Supposed to be nice weather as well. I did take some pictures while I was at the game tonight. They're mostly of the pre-game activities, but if you want to check them out, you can do so here.

About that error in the fourth on Matthews. Matthews has an outside shot to get to 200 hits in the season. After tonight's game, he has 187. There's eight games left in the season, which means he needs 1.6 per game to get there. Figure he gets four at bats a game, that's 32 at bats left in the season, and he needs 13. That's an average of .406 for the rest of the season. It's not impossible, but not a piece of cake, either. Every one helps. As long as I'm on that, Michael Young has 208 at the moment, only two behind Ichiro for the Major League lead in that department.

Also, as much as I want both the Dodgers & Padres to lose right now so my hometown Phillies can get in as the Wild Card leader, my heart broke listening to the ninth inning of the Padres game driving home, and how close Chris Young game to a no hitter tonight. I had tuned in to that game on my XM radio driving home, and went "AW CRAP" when he gave up the home run. I did wish Bruce Bochy did not take out Chris to get the final out. Reminds me of a game from 1999 when Mike Morgan was pitching for the Rangers. Mike had a shutout going into the ninth, and lost it on a home run to Todd Greene (then of the Angels). Really disappointing there, too, but Young's has to hurt more, as it was a no hitter.

Well, time to do another of those "catch up" updates. A little bit of end of season, no playoffs again burnout has caught up to me, and I let a few games slide, then I've spent the last three days or so sick, so I haven't felt like updating. But I didn't want to trail off at the end like that, so I'm doing another of my multi game updates here. Here's what I missed since my last game update:

G148: Rangers lose to Angels again, 2-1. It's not only annoying to lose a game 2-1, because it means you could have done so much more to win. But to have it twice in a row is annoying. Twice in a row to the same team is annoying. The icing on that bad piece of cake was that it happened in extra innings on a home run by Vlad Guerrero - who else? It's a shame that happened, as it blew a really fine outing by Robinson Tejeda, who went seven, giving up just five hits and no runs. In fact, all the offense came in the ninth inning. Both teams' closers gave up runs. Aki didn't get credited with a blown save, but Francisco Rodriguez (bah on the nickname "K-Rod") did. That made it more annoying, as it's not that easy to come back on that guy, and we did. Sigh. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G149: Rangers beat Angels 12-6. Saturday evening brought out the Rangers offense behind Rangers starter Adam Eaton. We jumped out early with a four spot in the first inning, which is unusual, as we have not been a very good first inning team this year. That four spot wasn't the only one we got this game, we had another in the 7th, as well as two two run innings (4th & 5th). The offense definitely worked tonight, pounding out 18 hits to get the 12 runs we scored. We had three doubles, one triple, and a pile of singles. Adam Eaton was OK, going 6.2 innings, giving up four earned runs on 11 hits. Could have been worse I suppose. Eaton didn't dominate, but did well enough. The usual Ranger killer from Anaheim was defintely not good at all. John Lackey gave up six runs on ten hits and was out of the game after just four innings. Chris Bootcheck was worse, giving up four earned runs on NO outs in the seventh. Anyway you look at it, Ranger offense was the big deal here. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G150: Rangers split series from Angels in the rain, 8-1. Vicente Padilla was the story of this one. Pidente went 7.1 innings, throwing shutout ball, scattering seven hits. Vicente also walked three, but struck out four. He wasn't lights out, but shutout ball over 7+ innings is nothing to sneeze at. I'm sure the three double plays the Ranger infielders turned had something to do with that. In all, the Angels got nine hits off of Ranger pitching (two doubles, one home run, and 6 singles) Nine hits is the same number of hits the Rangers had, but ours were obviously more productive. The Rangers got another double from September callup Miguel Ojeda, home runs by Matthews & Kinsler, and 6 singles. Taking a series from Anaheim might help if we try to make a push to finish ahead of them for second in the division at the end of the season, but we just split, which is treading water, really. As of right now, we're just four games behind 'em. Not easy, but not impossible, either. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G151: Rangers beat Mariners, 8-1. The Rangers now have a modest three game winning streak, after beating Seattle on Monday night by the score of 8-1. This is the second night in a row that we beat someone by that score (and the second time in a week we had two games in a row decided by the same score). Kevin Millwood continues to enjoy the mild weather in Arlington, as his numbers are much better when it's not blistering hot out there. Kevin got his 16th win of the season behind an 11 hit attack by our offense. Bolstered by a home run and three doubles, it was more than enough to handle what Seattle did offensively. Nelson Cruz had the big bop, a three run home run in the seventh, which was very nice icing, as those runs weren't really needed. :) King Felix (anyone else sick to death of hearing that nickname) was more like Prince Felix, going 5 innings, giving up four runs. Millwood however, was more like King Kevin, going 7 innings, giving up just one run. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G152: Rangers lose the game late to the Mariners, 9-7. These are the kinds of scores that you expect at the Ballpark in Arlington. 15 run affairs. Not those 2-1 games we saw recently. :) This was one where a boatload of pitchers were run out there. The Mariners threw six pitchers to the hill. The Rangers bested that with a total of 8 hurlers in all. Of the eight Ranger pitchers, five of them (Rheinecker, Rupe, Francisco, Littleton, & Benoit) didn't give up any runs. However, the other three did (Volquez, Otsuka, & Wilson), and that's wherein lies the rub. Aki got credited with a blown save in this one, although the two runs he allowed were unearned. We actually were doing OK in this one, being up 7-5 through 8 innings, and that's where the trouble lied. We gave up two runs in the ninth to send it to extra innings, and then two more in the tenth for the loss. It wasted a four home run performance by Texas (Matthews, Tex, Blalock, & Kinsler). Matthews' jack came in the first inning; always nice to see a leadoff home run. Attendance was pretty low, only 18,000 at the game. I know attendance is down overall, but the attendance numbers are (I believe) tickets sold, not people who come through the door, meaning that we only sold 18k. That's not particularly good. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G153: Rangers lose to Mariners again, 6-3. This game was not seen or heard by me, as it happened mostly during my bowling league. I did TiVo it, but when I got home, I was't particularly interested, and when I saw us losing, I didn't bother, I watched some Doctor Who instead. :) Anyway, the two errors by Ian Kinsler certainly didn't help things, as they lead to three unearned runs on Robinson Tejeda's ledger. The game probably would have been a lot different without the errors. We did have a few more doubles to set a club record, I think. We had a home run by Nelson Cruz, who is showing a little power late in the season. Wasn't enough. We blew this one. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

Edinson Volquez had a great outing. He had just one mistake, a home run ball to Molina onto Greens Hill. But Edinson had a great line, even if it was short. He came out after five innings, having only thrown 74 pitches. But when he was in there, he was good. No walks, two strikeouts. There were six hits, but that didn't seriously impact him, save for the home run, obviously. Our bullpen pitched well, too, not allowing any runs and no walks over four innings, gave up just one hit. It's hard to do better than that.

But Los Angeles Anaheim did. Their bullpen also didn't allow any runs in the 5 innings of relief they tossed. Anaheim starter Kelvim Escobar had to come out of the game after four innings, having given up just two hits and one run (an RBI single by DeRosa in the fourth). Anaheim's pitching kept the Rangers to just 5 hits in all, and just the lone run, adding another loss to a rather disappointing home season this year.

Not much else to talk about from this one, the Angels shut us down pretty well.

Kevin Millwood pitched well again, giving some more cedence to the recent theory that it's the 100 degree heat that's been the cause of his problems in Arlington. Kevin picked up his 15th win of the season behind a 7 inning, 7 hit, 2ER performance. I didn't see most of it, as it was on at the bowling alley during my league night, and I have a seriously hard time paying attention there. :)

Justin Verlander, the Tigers uber rookie this season looks (along with most of the rest of the team) to be out of gas this season. Verlander, who won me several games on some of my fantasy teams, was quite "Mark Clarkish" this game, going just 4.1IP, giving up 10 hits, 6ER, and a home run. We pretty much teed off on him. Former starter Mike Maroth also got hit a bit, as did Jason Grilli.

Anyway, the big story of the night anyway wasn't any of that. It was Gary Matthews. He hit the third cycle in Rangers history, and I believe the first natural one. Single, Double, Triple, Home Run - in that order. Boy, if we don't make a huge push to resign Matthews, it'll be a major mistake. I'd have to look up the numbers, but hasn't he outproduced Carlos Lee during Lee's time here? But Matthews hitting for the cycle was cool - got lead coverage on most national baseball outlets last night, including mlb.com.

We also had five home runs this game. Two by Carlos Lee, Matt Stairs, Gary Matthews, & Mike Young. Stairs' HR was a big majetic looking thing to the bleachers in the right field power alley.

Mike Young comes back to Arlington with 197 hits. I'm going to Friday night's game, so hopefully he doesn't get 3 tonight and get to 200 on Thursday. :)

This was a pretty darn good pitching duel by both starters, and both of their starts were wasted. One could make the point that Rogers' wasn't, as the Tigers won, but I'm referring to the point of neither starter getting a win - that's a "wasted start" to me.

Vicente Padilla: 7IP, 5H, 2ER, 2HR
Kenny Rogers: 7IP, 10H, 2ER, 1HR

In fact, of the five runs scored this game for both sides, 4 of them came from solo home runs. The game moved pretty darn quickly. We did make a few gaffes running the bases, including Carlos Lee trying to go to second from first on a flyball to left. In fact, we had the leadoff batter get to first in the first three innings, only to be wiped out by a double play.

But we lost the game on a walkoff home run by Carlos Guillen (his second of the night) off of Ron Mahay. Disappointing loss, as the Rangers certainly pitched well enough to win the game.

Didn't get to see any of this game, as I had a lot of church events going on this day, and what free time I had was spent watching football.

Go Jaguars. ;)

This was a very well pitched game, with both starters having lines like this:

Robinson Tejeda: 6.2IP, 2R, 1ER, 4H, 7K, 2BB
Jarrod Washburn: 6IP, 1ER, 6H, 5K, 2BB

There was a gaggle of relievers in this game (7 for Texas, 6 for Seattle). Most of them were fine. However, JJ Putz for Seattle gave up a key run, and then John Rheiecker was charged with another run, but Rhein's was worse as the game was lost on that one.

I didn't see the end of this game, as I had fallen asleep by that point. :)

This game was actually very well pitched, except for three half innings. Those would be the bottom of the fifth, the bottom of the eighth, and the top of the ninth.

Kevin Millwood actually pitched a quality start (technically), going 6 innings, giving up 3 runs. Jack Benoit pitched a scoreless seventh, but then Frank Francisco, fresh off the DL after Tommy John surgery, gave up two runs in his 0.2 IP. It took Rheinecker & Bauer to complete the other 1/3 of an inning, and the two of them gave up two hits and two runs to do it. The big problem was the grand slam that Rick Bauer gave up. Come to think of it, all 7 runs the Mariners got were on home runs. The three in the 5th were a 3 run home run, and the four in the 8th were a grand slam.

Cha Seung Baek looked good, going 7, shutting out the Rangers on four hits. Joel Piniero struggled a bit in the 9th, gave up a few hits and a couple of runs, but the Rangers really weren't in this offensively at all.

At least that old guy fan who wears the blue hat got to throw out the first pitch. ;)

Well, this was another game that I never got to see all of, because I went to bed before it was over. In fact, when I woke up, I had no idea what the final score was. Actually I did, I had seen it, because it was the current score in the bottom of the sixth. :)

The Texas offense was powered by Mark DeRosa who is likely to cash in with someone on a good contract for 2007 (sure hope it's with us). Mark had a three run home run in the top of the third inning to put us up 4-0 at the time. We actually should have been up by more than this, as we wasted a couple of good scoring opportunities early (including a bases loaded no out one in the first, which we got nothing from).

During this, Adam Eaton was rolling along putting up zeroes until the bottom of the fifth when Nick Swisher broke up the shutout with a home run over Gary Matthews' head in center field. Still, Eaton was looking good. However, we danced around Frank Thomas too many times, as Thomas walloped a three run home run in the bottom of the sixth to make the score 5-4.

And that was the game, except for 3.1 innings of scoreless relief by our bullpen which allowed us to hang on and get the win over the A's. But as I said earlier, it's a little too late, I can't see us climbing out of the hole we're in to overtake the Angels and the A's to win the division, which is the only way into the postseason for the AL West now.

In yesterday's update, I asked if Eric Young had played for us so far this season. He had not, but he was in the starting lineup today in left against Barry Zito. EY had a great day, going 2 for 5 with a double and a triple (which missed being a home run by a couple of feet). EY's double was a two run job in the first, and the triple (on which he later scored) came in the sixth. EY saw Barry Zito pretty well today in Oakland.

In fact, the Rangers as a whole have been pretty decent against Barry Zito in their last 10 starts, going 5-5. After starting off 12-0 against Zito in his career, .500 seems pretty pedestrian. However it only seems to be in Oakland. In Arlington, he still beats us down, but in his own park, we seem lately to own planet Zito. Today was another in that pattern. Zito walked three in the first inning, finally serving up the aforementioned two run double to Eric Young. We then got another run in the top of the third on the extremely rare inside the park home run to Nelson Cruz. We can thank Jay Payton for that. In fact, Payton played a big part in Gerald Laird's double, and Eric Young's triple, I don't think we would have gotten any of those if Payton had played his position correctly this afternoon.

We added another in the fourth, again by Nelson Cruz, who singled in Gerald Laird. Cruz struck again in the top of the sixth inning by jacking a Zito pitch over the right field wall for a three run home run. This drove Zito from the game finally, after having given up seven runs in his 5.1 innings pitched. Zito walked 6 in all, three in the first inning alone - he was not the unhittable pitching machine we have known from years gone by. But at least he won't be in our division after 2006, that's pretty much a given it seems.

While all this was going on, Robinson Tejeda was pitching a gem of his own. Robinson went 6.2 innings, gave up 10 hits, but no earned runs at all. The one run the A's got was an unearned run on a Laird fielding miscue. Joaquin Benoit & Wes Littleton turned in a combined 2.1IP, giving up just one hit between them; a nice followup. As with yesterday's game, it's a shame these great September performances won't count for much.

We did however get to see Eric Young have a great game, Nelson Cruz have a career game in RBI's (five), and a great pitching performance by a young pitcher who I hope sticks around and does well for awhile, Tejeda.

If Tejeda keeps pitching like that, it just might make some fans forget about us sending Dellucci away to get him.

As I'm also a Phillies fan, I follow them, and I remember well Kevin Millwood's no hitter a couple of years ago, so it was with great interest that I was watching the first few innings of this one, once it became obvious that Millwood was on this game.

Kevin Millwood was perfect through 4.2 innings, until he ran into the Kevin Kouzmanoff juggernaut. Kouzie homered off Millwood to break up the perfect game, no hitter, and shutout all at once. Yeah, I know he's only been in two games, but he has two home runs in 8 at bats in the majors. :) However, Millwood adjusted, and only gave up one more total hit (a double to catcher Martinez in the seventh). In all, Kevin Millwood gave up 1 run on two hits over his eight innings. He also struck out ten batters, which is a bit of a generally unattainable stat for Rangers pitchers. He was strong in every way, a commanding performance - and at our ballpark. Course it wasn't 100 degrees out, which might be the key to Kevin pitching in Arlington.

Offensively, we had a bunch of hits, but the only ones that mattered were all in the seventh inning. After Kinsler & Laird singled, Nelson Cruz hit a ball to short too far in the hole for Peralta to do anything with; it loaded the bases. Gary Matthews followed with a ball that looked like a clear double play, but his hustle kept it to just a fielders' choice and an RBI. Mike Young singled for his 181st hit of the season, scoring Gerald Laird, and driving Paul Byrd from the game. That brought in Fernando Cabrera to face Mark Teixeira who has found himself again in the second half of the season. This at bat was no different, Tex deposited a pitch from Cabera over the wall next to the Rangers' bullpen for a three run home run, extending our lead to 5-1. That was it for the Rangers' scoring this day.

The Indians faced CJ Wilson in the top of the ninth who allowed one unearned run (on a Michael Young error). With a run in, it made it a save situation, bringing in Aki who did allow a single after coming in, but did manage to get the Kouzmanoff juggernaut to ground out to end the game, getting the win and his 30th save of the season.

While we're not mathematically out of the race, we essentially are, it's a shame great games like this will be lost to the season in a month spent trying to figure out 2007. Oh well. I guess there's Mike Young's march to 200 hits.

Has Eric Young actually played yet since being called up? That seems like a bit of a surprise to me.

I'll probably have a proper update on tonight's game later, but in the meantime, this is about all I can think of to say..

DARNIT! DARNIT!

In case I end up not updating for this one, it was nice to see Kevin Kouzmanoff from Cleveland make major league history with a grand slam on the first pitch he saw in the major leagues. Funny thing is I called it right before it happened, and I got a few funny looks from the people sitting around me at the game. :)

Earlier this year during spring training, the Indians gave Grady Sizemore a rather nice contract. It was for 6 years, $23.4 million dollars. It runs through 2011, and there's a 2012 option. Watching this series, you should be able to see why they did it. Just in last night's game, Sizemore went 3 for 3 with two doubles, a home run, he walked twice, did not strike out, and scored two runs. I'd say that was a pretty positive offensive evening at the ol' ballyard. While he muffed a play in ceter field on a ball hit by Gerald Laird, and he was picked off first by Padilla, he's something special. He's only 24, and looks to be in the Cleveland lineup being productive for awhile.

However, it wasn't just Sizemore that beat us. Vicente Padilla had his worst outing in awhile, as he's been generally excellent recently. Padilla went 5.1 innings, but had a ton of pitches (112, and 91 after 4), allowed 6 runs, gave up 8 hits and walked three. We got down early, as Padilla gave up three runs in the first, another in the second, and it felt pretty deflating, we never seemed to get up off the carpet after that.

In fact, of our two runs, one was a solo home run by Ian Kinsler, a no doubter to the back of the seats in section 7. The other one was an RBI single by Carlos Lee (his 100th overall RBI in 06). We could never get anything going against Jake Westbrook, who I think would be a perfect pitcher for the Rangers in this ballpark. Unfortuantely, the Indians hold an 07 option on him, which I suspect they'll take.

For the first time in awhile, I'm actually ready for football season to start, which is rather unusual for me, I'm not truly ready for that until after the World Series. I guess this dropoff at the end of the season has gotten to me more than I had realized.

The Rangers jumped all over Daniel Cabrera early to the tune of 4 runs in the first two innings. That intial jump was led by a disputed (and probably incorrect from the replays) home run by Gary Matthews, as well as a double by Carlos Lee. In fact, in the five innings he pitched, Cabera gave up five runs (4ER). For a guy who was as touted as he was, that's a lot.

On the flop side, Adam Eaton went five himself, giving up just 2 runs (1ER). He probably would have gone further, but had 93 pitches through five; rather a lot for just five innings. Joaquin Benoit came in and kept the Orioles at bay until the ninth when he appeareed to run out of gas, giving up three runs which at that point brought the A's to within two. It required bringing out Otsuka for a save.

I didn't see any of this game, was doing some baby stuff. :)

I wonder who we're calling up today now that the rosters have expanded.

I won't have time to write about this, as there has been an uh "event" at my company which will take all my time to deal with.

Suffice it to say that Tejeda was not very good last night - it took him something like 45 pitches to get out of the first inning. Ugh. And then the 10th. Ugh 2.

I did something I actually haven't done much this year, which was go to a Rangers game. I've written before about the cost of these things - so I won't go into that again, but cost is the reason why I don't go to as many anymore. By the end of August, I've gone to roughly 20 by this point. This year I think my total attendance is under 10. I'd have to go count, but it's probably 7 or 8, I think. But I went using one of the ticket vouchers the Rangers have sent me in a "Hey we want you to come back" kind of promotion. Was a great night for baseball. As I knew the place would be mostly wide open, I decided to sit in Section 3 up against the Orioles' bullpen. I hadn't ever intentionally sat out in that area before (that I can remember anyway), so I decided to give it a go. Was a nice night weather wise, so I chose that (Sec 3, Row 7, Seat 1 formally). I ended up sitting amongst a family of Baltimore fans, which who were nice to chat with.

So I filled out my lineup card with a bit of trepidation, as Kevin Millwood is not known for stellar pitching performances in Arlington. However, it was in the mid 80's when this game started, and that seemed to really impact him, as his overall line was pretty good. 9 IP, 4ER, 8 hits, 8 strikeouts, and NO walks. Now the strikeouts seemed to be helped by Larry Vanover, who had a really wide strike zone (O's pitching had 11 Ks). After the early couple of innings when Kevin seemed to be relying on just his fastball, he mixed in his curve, and things got going. In the top of the third, Jay Gibbons doubled, but that would be the last hit the Orioles would get until two outs in the ninth. Millwood retired 18 in a row at one point. He gave up a couple of hits in a row in the top of the ninth for the fourth run, but from the third on, he was masterful, he was the ace we're paying him to be. I'm hoping that in 2007 he can parlay his' years' experience pitching here into better home results.

The game offensively was a see-saw battle early, with the O's scoring two in the top of the second, then we got three in the bottom, and they tied it up with the aforementioned double in the top of the third. It stayed that way for a bit until Mark Teixeira hit a solo home run in the fifth that BARELY cleared the wall in right field. That gave us the lead we never looked back on.

The only other scoring the Rangers would do would be a nice five spot in the bottom of the seventh, mostly against Rodrigo Lopez, who appeared to be completely out of gas when eventually taken out - he probably should have been out much earlier than he was. Hank Blalock & Mark DeRosa had the big hits in that inning driving in most of the runs. Hank's was a double against a left hander (Byrdak) who had come in just to face Hank. Odd that the Homies weren't there to cheer him.

However, the best moment of the game for me aside from the Rangers win was Corey Patterson's catch in the second inning. Going full tilt into the wall, he caught it and crumpled over - it was quite a spectacular catch. From where I was sitting, I had a GREAT view of it, as I was sitting exactly parallel to the center field wall, so I had a completely close and perfect angle to see it. It was quite the catch, I had to applaud it even before the customary applause a team's fans gives an opposing player who has gotten hurt. It was quite the catch.

But I was glad I went - it wasn't opressively hot, we won, and I had a nice time. Too bad it has to be so darn hot to sap these nice feelings out of people in the summer.

The Rangers managed a win in the final game of the A's series, which is disapponting, as we needed to sweep the A's to have any realistic chance of getting back in the race.

However, you couldn't fault Vicente Padilla in this series. He certainly held up his end of the bargain in the finale Sunday. He was strong, going 8 innings, giving up just four hits, while striking out eight. He did walk four, which is a bit high, but it didn't impact him, as he pitched a shutout. Aki followed up for his 28th save of the season - that's really all that needs be said about our pitching, it was quite good this day.

Oakland starter Dan Haren wasn't bad, either going 7 giving up three runs on 7 hits with twelve strikeouts. But Padilla bested him, and you only need win by one run. It was enough to salvage something, but man it feels like too little too late.

While we got some great pitching, our offense was pretty flat (Matthews & Young had 5 of the 7 team total hits alone), and it just feels like "a little late to the party for this kind of game, guys".

Since we've sunken to our low point of the season in terms of being out of it, I felt the image at the bottom of this entry was an appropriate image to use tonight.

About the only high point of the actual game was when Carlos Lee doubled in two runs in the bottom of the eighth. Came up with the bases loaded; the exact situation we brought him over here for, and he delivered. Oh, and Joaquin Benoit pitched pretty well, too.

But we had 8 hits in all, 5 of them by Mike Young and Carlos Lee. Adam Eaton was knocked around a bit, Wes Littleton was pretty wild with his control, it just didn't feel good at all, despite the great performance by Benoit who did keep us in the game. Could have actually been a lot worse, Frank Thomas came up twice I believe with the bases loaded, and didn't deliver - we could have lost by a lot more than just two runs.

I think this image applies very well tonight. At least it will make it less crowded when I go to some games in September. :(

I bet Barry Zito wished Mark DeRosa had gotten sick, or that we had started Eric Young in right field tonight. More on that later.

Edinson Volquez started for Texas, and he had a really high pitch count; 91 through 4. He managed to navigate a few minefields, the worst was in the fourth where Volquez walked a couple, allowed three singles, but only let two in during the fourth (three overall). I guess it wasn't that great of an outing when you look at it that way, but given how many guys were out there on the bags in the top half of the frames, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Volquez was out after four, replaced by Josh Rupe. Rupe was a lot more effective. He needed just 8 pitches in his first inning. In fact, the rest of Volquez' relief was fine, as they all shut out the A's until the ninth, when Rick Bauer gave up a two run double making the score 5-0 and then Michael Young comitted a throwing error allowing a sixth run to score, ending Bauer's time on the hill. CJ Wilson came in and finished the game for Texas, but not before making the ninth inning stick a whole lot worse, giving up three more runs to make it 9-0.

None of that really mattered though. We were up against Mr. Teddy Bear, who is about 150-2 when pitching against the Rangers. And he continued to make our guys look like soft hitting Teddy Bears because we had donut through seven (save for one walk). That was until Mark DeRosa came up in the bottom of the 8th and broke up the no hitter, singling to center field. OK, at that point I could root for the Rangers again. I never really root against them, but if you're gonna be beat, at least you could have said "it was a no hitter". :)

As it was, the entire team was shut down through eight plus innings except for Mark DeRosa who got a single. He also walked later. However, in the ninth, Zito faltered a bit, walking Gary Matthews, and then letting Michael Young reach on a fielder's choice that got nobody out. Carlos Lee followed that up with a triple scoring Young & Matthews. That chased Zito from the game. Chad Gaudin followed, and allowed the third run on a groundout by Tex, scoring Lee. That was all we could put together.

The funny thing is I already had this paragraph written in the middle of the ninth after Matthews' walk as if Zito was going to go the distance on a one hitter; I had to rewrite the bit above when we got a little life. :)

We lost the game 9-3, but it was't as close as that. Felt like we should have had a zero in the runs column the way Zito pitched. And now we're 8 games back with 32 to go. Doesn't look good for the home eleven.

The Rangers finally managed to beat the Devil Rays on Thursday night. The fact that I have to make a point out of that is sad. We are down seven games to the A's now as we (IMO) limp home to face the A's. We have three games against them, and we could end up four out. Or we could end up a whole lot worse. My gut feeling says we'll take 1 of the 3.

Anyway, the Devil Rays series was just depressing, I didn't want to write about it. Although on Thursday night, we got a glimmer of what made the Rangers trade David Dellucci to the Phillies at the end of spring training. Robinson Tejeda went for us, and ever since he beat us back in Philly last June, he's struck me as one of those types with great talent, but no control, mostly due to his young age. But tonight Tejeda went 7.2 Innings, giving up just two runs on 5 hits. I didn't see most of the game, but his line looked pretty good.

Offensively we managed to get nine hits in all. Carlos Lee & Gerald Laird had two each, the rest were scattered, with no other Ranger getting more than one. Tex, Blalock, & Lee all doubled, and Carlos Lee also had a home run - something he was lauded for before the trade, but seems to be not doing much since donning Texas blue.

It's always nice to get a win, but we should have had way more than just ONE in the Tampa series. Sigh.

I give up.

I'm not stopping the site at all, I've weatherd some bad teams since I started this, but I give up on the 2006 season. Sigh.

Oh well. Who will our outfield be in 2007?

Sigh.

Got a little behind with some real life stuff, going to take a break from updating for the Tigers series. See ya early next week.

Well, there were two innings worth talking about in this game. The first one is the third inning, and the other is the ninth.

The third was notable because of the big huge 8 spot we put on the board. This was capped off by a grand slam by Ranger outfielder Nelson Cruz. This apparently was the first time that Cruz ever came to the plate with the bases loaded as a major leaguer, and he hit a line drive grand slam over the left field wall. That wasn't the only run Cruz scored that inning, as he was driven in on a two run home run by Ian Kinsler. Kinsler's home run was interesting because it came a pitch or two after what would have been a caught stealing for Cruz, which was negated when home plate umpire Sam Holbrook nullifed the play on his own umpire's interference. That was a very good inning for us.

The top of the 9th was set up by some fun in the bottom of the 8th. Mike Young was hit by a Kevin Gregg pitch. Brandon Donnelly relieved Gregg, and immediately hit Freddie Guzman with a pitch, and was ejected. In the top of the ninth, the Rangers brought on Scott Feldman to pitch the ninth, and the submarine pitcher was later discovered to be a submarine puncher, too. This was when Adam Kennedy was plunked, charging the mound, clearing the benches.

The brawl wasn't a really long drawn out one, in fact, as bench clearing brawls go, it was pretty tame, not a lot of those secondary and tertiary fights you usually see. But it's always entertaining to watch these things. Best moment of the fight for me was Mark DeRosa's football style tackle of Adam Kennedy who got plunked pretty well by Scott Feldman, who punches sidearmed too. It wasn't quite the pasting that Nolan Ryan gave to Robin Ventura, but Feldman's pounding of Kennedy can pretty much be seen in the photo here. Kennedy didn't get much (if anything) on Feldman before being tackled to the ground by Mark DeRosa.

Of course, all this was set up by Vicente Padilla yesterdaay, and also Adam Eaton a week or so ago, so there's been a lot of beanball between the teams lately. Will make for an interesting end run of the season, if this stuff is still hanging around.

On to Detroit where we meet Kenny Rogers & Pudge again tomorrow.

I didn't see much of this game, so I won't have a lot to say, just a couple of the bullet points.

• Vicente Padilla was ejected for throwing at Angels batters. I honestly didn't realize that, as I had missed that bit of the game, and for some reason never caught any mention of it in the bits I did see. Word came down on Wed that the Rangers aren't happy with the way it came down and are talking about suspending Pidente over that.
• We added four more doubles to our doubles pile.
• We had four home runs, including Matt Stairs' first as a Ranger.

That's about all I have for this one. Better hit the official recap link below for further details.

Here's an image I haven't been able to break out in awhile; my sweep image. But it was a good sweep, as it was four games against an opponent inside our own division. This is always good. Now it was just the Mariners, who were behind us, but it's always good to put some room between you and anyone in your division. Although I don't think anyone's worried about the Pittsburgh Pirates or Kansas City Royals sneaking up on them in the standings. Mariners are a little closer than that, so four games helps.

Behind a freshly shaven Kevin Millwood, the Rangers gave up a two spot in the second, but took the lead back straight away with a 3 run bottom of the inning. This was fueled by a bases loaded double by Gary Matthews (who was thrown out trying to strech it into a triple). But it was enough to give us the lead. Millwood gave up another run in the top of the third on a sac fly, but that's all he would give up for the game.

After that we got to Felix Hernandez for three more in the bottom of the fifth, and after another in the bottom of the sixth on a wild pitch, Felix was gone. However, that wasn't it. We scored again in the seventh and eighth to widen our lead to 9-3.

Rick Bauer, who seemed a lock awhile back to have the 8th inning setup role has become shaky lately. He gave up three more runs in his 1.2 innings of work. In fact, I think I remember seeing Aki get up becaue of Bauer's performance. But we got the win, and the sweep, no matter how rocky the 9th looked.

We had five more doubles as a team to load on top of our massive mound of them this year. Mike Young had a triple. Nobody had a home run. But Millwood went 6 and got a win.

More imprortantly we've shown we can handle the Mariners, which will be helpful as we go down the stretch.

After the first two games of the series, I was feeling pretty good about our team vs the Mariners. But then I remembered that Edinson Volquez was pitching. Now I don't have anything against Volzquez - he's a wonderful talent. In the minor leagues. While he's shown flashes of brilliance in the majors, he's not had the same kind of success up here - yet.

So I wasn't expecting a lot when he took the mound Saturday night. He proved me wrong, going seven innings, giving up no runs on just four hits. He did walk three, so it wasn't as "crisp" as that line showed. But you can't argue with seven innings of shutout ball. Benoit came in and stunk up the joint - all four runs the Ms have were on his ledger. Bauer & Otsuka had zeroes up there, which kept it a win for the Rangers. But Volquez had a great outing, something that I agree with Mike Hindman on.. It didn't get a lot of coverage locally.

Offensively, we continued our pile of extra base hits. We got doubles from Gary Matthews & Ian Kinsler. We got home runs from Gary Matthews & Gerald Laird. We had 12 hits in all, so most of them were just singles. Tex was 3-3, Matthews was 2-4, Laird was 2-3. Was a fairly balanced attack. Seven of our nine starters got at least one hit (Blalock & Cruz did not).

There was a 20 minute rain delay in this one. I did not go to the game - I didn't miss the rain, I hate rain delays. I would have liked to have seen the 1996 "reunion", however.

Still, we go into Sunday with the possibility of doing something we haven't done in ages, that being sweep a team in a four game series.

I don't suppose anyone reading this has an extra Sundberg bobblehead they wouldn't mind trading for the Mike Young bobblehead from earlier this year, would they? I have a new one of that in the box, and would like to trade. If you would like to do this, drop me an email.

Why did I miss my bobblehead? Well, I left work promptly at 6PM. I work over near Northwest Highway & LBJ in Garland. So it's a bit of a drive for me, but with a 7:30 game, there shouldn't have been any problem. Then I got past the downtown Mixmaster after the usual slowdowns before it. I hit the wall. It took me about 45 minutes to go from the main post office outside of Dallas to Cocherel Hill. That's what, two miles? It was 7:20 when I got past the accident, and fortunately, I got to 30 & Six Flags right as the first pitch was thrown. I parked my car right when the Mariners finished batting in the top of the first, and got inside the ballpark right after Carlos Lee flied out to right, so I saw all the real fun. But yikes, I detest being late for a game with a passion, and right up until the point I broke through the traffic jam, I contemplated turning around. However I was 2/3 there already, and I ended up not missing much.

Good thing I came, as I saw a whale of a game. This game was "over" after four innings. But those first four innings were highly eventful. Kip Wells put up a zero in the top of the first, but a couple of key errors in the bottom of the first kept the Mariners from doing the same. A Ben Broussard throwing error could have been a double play, and then a Betancourt throwing error could have been out three, had the Broussard one not happened. As it was we put up a big crooked line in the first inning; a seven. In all we got seven runs on just TWO hits, as Gil Meche was just abysmal, walking four in the first. In fact, here's the play by play for the first inning:

• G. Matthews Jr. walked
• M. Young walked, G. Matthews Jr. to second
• C. Lee flied out to deep right center, G. Matthews Jr. to third
• M. Teixeira walked, M. Young to second
• H. Blalock reached on fielder's choice, G. Matthews Jr. scored, M. Young to third, M. Teixeira to second on B. Broussard's throwing error
• M. Stairs flied out to shallow left
• I. Kinsler walked, M. DeRosa to second
• R. Barajas safe at first on shortstop Y. Betancourt's throwing error, H. Blalock and M. DeRosa scored, I. Kinsler to third, R. Barajas to second
• G. Matthews Jr. singled to shallow right, R. Barajas and I. Kinsler scored
• M. Young flied out to deep right

Quite an eventful first inning. Kip Wells was a little wobbly in the top of the second, but didn't allow anyone to score. Then came the bottom of the second. Gil Meche walked the first two batters of the inning, which prompted Grover to take him out. Gil Meche faced only 13 batters, and walked 6 of them. He threw 54 pitches to get his three outs, 30 of them were balls, only 24 strikes. Again, abysmal.

Blalock then singled loading the bases. Mark DeRosa doubled to right center, but it wasn't your traditional double, it hung up a bit, prompting the runners to hold up to see what happened. When it landed, it forced the always amusing to watch bit where two baserunners are right next to each other rounding the bases (BLalock & Teixiera). Tex scored, but Blalock was tagged out, denying DeRosa a three run double. Instead he just had two. DeRosa scored a minute later when Matt Stairs singled him in.

The Mariners broke the shutout in the top of the third with a double (Beltre) and a single (Ibanez). Still, we're doing OK. One run through three is not bad. Then we came up in the bottom of the third, and got the run back immediately, as Carlos Lee annihilated the first pitch of the inning way WAY over the left field fence, past the seats and almost down the walkway behind Section 8 in left. Very impressive looking home run. A couple of batters later, Mark DeRosa had another home to almost the same place, it too was very impressive looking. That gave DeRosa just the triple needed for the cycle, which he didn't get unfortunately. But he still had a pile of RBI's, can't complain about that.

The wheels fell off a bit in the top of the fourth, the Mariners put up their own big ugly squiggly number on the linescore, a 6. Here's how they did it:

• K. Johjima doubled to deep left
• Y. Betancourt singled to left, K. Johjima to third
• A. Jones doubled to deep left, K. Johjima and Y. Betancourt scored
• I. Suzuki safe at first on second baseman I. Kinsler's fielding error, A. Jones scored
• J. Rupe relieved K. Wells
• J. Lopez singled to right, I. Suzuki to third
• A. Beltre grounded into fielder's choice, I. Suzuki out at home, J. Lopez to third, A. Beltre to second
• R. Ibanez homered to deep right center, A. Beltre and J. Lopez scored
• R. Sexson singled to right
• B. Broussard hit by pitch, R. Sexson to second
• K. Johjima struck out swinging
• Y. Betancourt flied out to right

Kip Wells came out in this inning with what we're told is a foot injury. That's two injury issues since he's been here, which has been just a couple of weeks. That's rather troubling. Not sure what to make of that now, but Wells did get dropped on the one fantasy team I had him on.

In the bottom of the fourth, we got one of the runs back on a Gary Matthews home run into the Rangers bullpen. And that would be it for the scoring, save for a sac fly by DeRosa in the seventh. That was a total of 20 runs in the first four innings for both teams.

I was glad I went, nice to see an offensive explosion in person again, but I did miss getting my Sundberg bobblehead. Bummer. When I was walking out after the game, Sunny was still signing his bobbleheads. I heard he was doing that before the game; I wonder if he was there the whole game or not. If so, he was there for quite awhile.

And as a final kicker, when I was coming home, I was just getting to Reunion Arena, and saw Rt 30 backed up as far as I could see. I shot up onto 35E North and took it to 635, and over to 30. I spent a lot more time driving back and forth to the Rangers game than I would have liked tonight. We need a high speed rail line that goes to the Rangers games, dammit!

Well, for the first five and a half innings, not much happened. The Mariners did get two runs, but both were on wind assisted home runs that barely cleared the outfield wall. Joel Piniero was cruising, which was odd, as we usually annihilate him. Adam Eaton was doing well too, except for the two home run balls. Time was flying, and I was out and about running some errands, so I was listening to the game on the radio. I got home in the top of the seventh inning, but I had to replay the bottom of the sixth on my TiVo.

Up until this point, Piniero had only allowed three singles to Ranger hitters. We were pretty asleep at the wheel. It was at this point that the annihilation began. Rod Barajas singled, Sarge Jr walked, and after a Mike Young flyout, Carlos Lee singled to load the bases. It was at this point that Mark Teixeira cleared the bases with a double that missed being a grand slam by a foot or two right off the wedgie in right field, giving us the lead 3-2.

Which was good, because Buck took out Eaton and put in CJ Wilson. Two quick groundouts and a strikeout later, we were back at bat, and the seventh turned out to be more interesting than the sixth. Piniero went back out, but didn't have much. After a Stairs groundout, Kinsler singled, Rod Barajas doubled, putting men on second and third. Piniero's last act was to intentionally walk Gary Matthews to get to Michael Young. Now I know it was a double play move, but wow - Young is lights out with the bases loaded.

It was at this point that I thought "Man, the folks at USS Mariner will be firing up another 'Kill Hargrove' thread". I knew they wouldn't be liking this.

Grover brought in Julio Mateo, and he promptly gave up a double to Mike Young, which kicked up chalk in the left field corner. Sarge ran through the stop sign at third, and scored. The throw home from Betancourt bounced off Jojima, and went into the Rangers dugout. This awarded Michael Young a little league grand slam (OK, really a double with a two base error), but still.

And the fun didn't end there. Carlos Lee then singled, Tex walked, Blalock singled to right, loading the bases again. At this point, Grover took out Mateo (who retired no one), and replaced him with Sean Green. Mark DeRosa singled to the left side, but the ball hit Mark Teixeira in the back, which cost us a run when Carlos Lee was forced to return to third. Green then plunked Matt Stairs, who was up for the second time in the inning, forcing in the eighth run.

There was no more scoring after this, but I have to say this game really turned on a dime. We did to Piniero late in his appearance what we usually do early on. We picked up a half a game on the idle A's, and a game on the Angels (who got blown out). We're now alone again in third place, 5 back of Oakland.

Time for another of those catchup posts. I missed a few games, mostly due to the fact that the stupid games are starting so late again.

G112: Rangers lose to Angels, 9-1: This game turned me off pretty quickly. The ejection of Adam Eaton in the first inning pretty much annoyed me. As it annoyed a lot of other Ranger fans from reading - I also saw the guys on Baseball Tonight get into it and question the ejection. Whether it would have turned the game, who knows. Josh Rupe followed Eaton, and gave up 5 runs in the 1.2 innings he pitched following Eaton's departure. We were down 8 runs in the second inning; a certain recipe for disaster. It wasn't helped by the double error Ian Kinsler made on the same play. Just a game that got too ugly too fast, and we just really had no hope in this one early on. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G113: Rangers lose to A's, 7-4: This was a game I didn't get to see much of at all, because I was too tired, and went to sleep before it finished. When I went to bed, it was 4-2 A's. In looking at the box score, Volquez wasn't particularly great, giving up 4 runs in 5 innings while walking two. I've seen a lot worse than that, but those kinds of numbers won't win you many ballgames. Rick Bauer didn't help, giving up 3 more in his inning plus. Our old buddy Esteban Loaiza went 6.2Ip, giving up all four runs the Rangers scored.

Speaking of that, Hank Blalock busted out with a home run, but generally is doing his usual second half slump, although it doesn't feel as pronounced to me (I haven't looked up the numbers before making that statement). Matt Stairs chipped in with a couple of doubles, plus Kinsler & Tex had a double as well. Hard to write about this one as I didn't see most of it. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G114: Rangers lose to A's, 7-6: This game I didn't see ANY of, as I was not feeling well, and went to bed around 10PM. Given I was going to bed that early (I normally don't go to bed until 2AM), I had some other things I needed to get done before I hit the sack. As I didn't see any of this game at all, I'll have no actual commentary for it, except to say that an interference call in the 9th inning is a really odd way to end the game. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

G115: Rangers destroy A's, 14-0: Well, this one can be summed up like this. "SAVE SOME FOR ANOTHER GAME, GUYS!" Given how many close games we've had, winning by 14 runs is both fun and really maddening. I know baseball is different every time you play it, but you always get mad when something like this happens right after losing by one run. Arrrrgh!

Anyway, this one was all Rangers, and it pulled us back to being 5.5 games out in the West. Not too bad, but we can't afford much more of "not too bad", we have to get up there and do this kind of stuff routinely if we want to end up on the top of the division. It's still possible obviously, but you get the feeling that we need to start moving quickly.

This game was led by Mark DeRosa who had two three run home runs as well as a double and a single, with 6 RBI's in all and two runs scored. He wasn't the only one, Carlos Lee finally got a home run as a Texas Ranger. We had four doubles in all (Tex, Matthews, Hairston, & DeRosa). Barajas & Matthews also had home runs besides the ones I've already mentioned. Was pretty efficient too, having 17 hits and 14 runs.

We pretty much nailed Barry Zito, which does't usually happen. Zito gave up 6ER in his 5+ IP. Their relievers didn't fare much better either (except for Flores who stopped the bleeding). Vicente Padilla on the other hand was pretty darn good, going 7 innings, giving up no runs on 6 hits and 6 strikeouts. Ron Mahay also pitched two scoreless innings of relief.

Overall a game that went the Rangers way in just about every way possible. Just wish there were more like that. [ Game recap on mlb.com ]

I didn't see this game, as I was busy doing daddy stuff, and when I did tune in towards the end of the game, it was already 9-3, so I was't as inclined to start watching it. :)

We were pretty much shut down by Anaheim's pitching, getting only 5 hits in all during the game. Two of them were by Gary Matthews, one was a double by Carlos Lee, and one was a triple by Hank Blalock. One of the runs the Angels gave up was unearned, too.

John Koronka's line wasn't good - going only 4 innings and giving up 7 earned runs on 7 hits with FIVE walks. Ugh. No wonder we got beat.

Mark DeRosa did it all. Well, OK he didn't, but don't people always seem to say that when a player has a really great game? Mark (I can't stand the nickname DeRoll) DeRosa went 2 for 3 with a walk, which doesn't sound that impressive.

However, the two were a single, and a grand slam. That was DeRosa's first grand slam of his career, which was nice to see, as it came against John Lackey, who has pretty much confounded the Rangers since he made his major league debut against us a few years back (which I was at). Mark also made a great defensive catch in the seventh. It ended up being a sac fly, but it saved a second run from scoring. Mark's other RBI was on a based loaded walk.

I still dispute the batter getting an RBI on a bases loaded walk. The stat is runs batted in. Those aren't batted in.

Anyway, it was a big night for DeRosa. Vicente Padilla (who seems to be getting no coverage around these parts on his recent arrest) pitched well, if not completely dominating. He had a few parts where it was a little wobbly, and a lot of other parts to this game where he did look dominating. Still, you can't argue with the line; 7IP, 7H, 3R, 5K, 0BB. Josh Rupe followed up with two innings of scoreless relief.

Overall a nice win, one fueled by Mark DeRosa. We're now back in second place in our rather bunched up division, only 2.5 games out. The Angels now have likely lost Bartolo Colon for the season (time to hit the drop button on a few fantasy leagues), which can only help us going down the stretch.

This game went 12 innings, and it's quarter after 1 in the morning. I'll write about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are some raw notes I took while watching the game, I'll make this more cohesive tomorrow. :)

I ended up getting really busy at work and didn't have time to expand on this. In a way my raw notes are a different kind of report, I guess. :)

Great throw by Matthews in the 6th to nail Cabrera at the plate in the 6th. Millwood stop on a ball hit baack to him in 6th to end inning.

Millwood had some great curveballs going in this game, he looked really sharp.

Three hits by Matthews

Guerrero keeps his streak alive, 43 games. Home Run. What a shock.

Mike Young - league leading 38th double.

Hector Carrasco in 7th. Three pitches, three hits - single, double, single, run in. Tex followed with a double, then Carrasco is out with 0.0 IP. JC Romero, comes in to pitch, then Blalock bounced it into the ground and way up for another single and an RBI, and then he's out. In comes Brendan Donnelly, and gets a double play and a grounder to end the inning.

Bottom of the 8th. Awwwwww SHIT!

Extra innings. Tired.

Figure out who it was earlier in the game who swung at a pitch at his head to end the inning, promtping much laughter from Josh & Tom. -- Juan Rivera, also HR guy in 8th.

Millwood deserved better, the way he pitched.

Here comes the calvary.

In an afternoon game on Wednesday, the Rangers opened up the offense again and beat the Twins to win the series with a score of 10-2. The calvary arrived in the form of Kip Wells from the Pittsburgh Pirates. OK, it was more than him, but when a guy you trade for makes a start and gets a win, it's always a good feeling.

Wells, who I sort of knew as I pay attention to the Pirates somewhat due to my wife being from there, wasn't someone that terribly excited me. Yes, it's help. Yes, it's major league help - but Kip Wells spent time on the DL this year, and was 1-5 before coming over from Pittsburgh this year. Last year, he was 8-18 with a 5.09 ERA. Year before that was 5-7 4.55. So he's not exactly a true saviour. However, he's probably good for now.

He only went 5 innings today, giving up seven hits and just one run, but got the win. Our four relievers combined for 5 hits and one run, so that was good work there.

Rick Bauer is looking more like a guy who can keep the job he's been handed with Cordero out of town now.

Mark Teixeira led the offence with two home runs. We also got our mlb leading lead in doubles extended with a total of 4 more in that department. Mark DeRosa seems to be heating up again, and Gerald Laird is getting a lot more playing time. My gut feeling says that Barajas is not here next year, and Laird finally gets his chance to be the #1 starter in 2007.

And I couldn't end this without snickering at the name of the starting pitcher for the Twins. Boof Bonser. I know he legally changed his name to that some time ago, but it's stll worth a snicker even at age 40. Buahahaha. :)

This was shaping up to be a nice pitcher's duel. Through the first three innings, not much happened. The score was 0-0 at that point. Adam Eaton was going against Scott Baker of the Twins.

Both had things pretty much in check, although Eaton was helped out a bunch in the bottom of the third after he walked two consecutive batters, and each of them was thrown out by Rod Barajas when they attempted to steal second.

However, in the fourth, I had visions of that inning against the Orioles a decade ago when we got 16 runs in one inning (a club record still). We unloaded on the Twins for 8 runs in the top of the fourth. It was a massacre. Carlos Lee started things off with a double. Blalock singled, scoring Lee. Matt Stairs reached on a throwing error, allowing Blalock to score and Kinsler to move up. Rod Barajas got plunked, then Wilkerson (hitting 9th!) singled, scoring Ian Kinsler.

Then Gary Matthews stepped up, and on a 3-2 count, absolutely destroyed a ball into the upper deck for a grand slam, his career second. This home run was an absolute no doubter off the bat - the kind that just looks like it would never come down. I've never actually been to the Metrodome, but I've seen a bunch of games on TV there, and I can't recall ever seeing a home run hit that far up there. Quite impressive - and to follow it up, Mike Young hit a solo home run right after that to finish off the scoring. Mark Teixeira followed up with an RBI single in the 9th to add another one, but this game was all over when Matthews hit his slam.

Following that, the Twins pen didn't do too bad at all. In relief of Baker, the four Twins pitchers combined for 5.2 IP, allowing just two hits and one run - all of that on the fourth reliever (Juan Rincon).

Adam Eaton did a bit better than most people were expecting. His stamina still needs a little work, but he went 6 innings - helped out by the Barajas caught stealings I mentioned before. He gave up just four hits, although he did walk four, which didn't help, but none of them scored. CJ Wilson & Scott Feldman pitched 3 innings of scoreless relief, for the first shutout thrown by the Rangers in a bit.

I'm getting a little worried about all these lopsided wins. 15-2 one way, 15-2 the other way, and then 9-0. I'd prefer a little more consistancy in our offense and pitching. One way or the other, please. Preferably wins.

The Twins open up a seriously large can of whoop-ass on the Rangers tonight, beating them 15-2. There's very little positive to say about this game. Let's see what I can find.

Rick Bauer pitched one scoreless inning of relief.
Nelson Cruz got his first major league home run.
Mark Teixeira hit a home run.
Not much else.

The "bad" list is signficantly larger than that. There's not enough time to write about all of that, but a few of those "high"lites...

The Rangers gave up a 5 run first.
The Rangers gave up three seperate 3 run innings
Carlos Lee had his first ofer in a Ranger uniform.
The Rangers are in last place now.

After thinking a bit more about the Matt Stairs trade, I'm not as "WTF" about as I was when it was first announced. He can probably help off the bench, he's better than my initial remarks said, but I still find it an odd move. Course that's more an indictement (sp?) of Brad Wilkerson's failure in 2006 than anything else.

Matt Stairs got beat 15-2 two nights in a row in two different uniforms.

John Wasdin was designated for assignment to make room on the roster for Matt Stairs, so we're told. Makes me wonder who will go off the 25 for Kip Wells tomorrow.

I'm feeling kind of sick tonight, I'll lay low on writing a lot. I was at the other two games in this series, of course they save all the offense for the game I'm not there for. :)

Carlos Lee continues to deliver with the bat again. Lots of offense all over the place. In games like this, you tend to get garbage lineup changes - we had Rod Barajas playing first base at the end of the game. :)

I was disappointed in this. 12 men left on base? Lose the series to the Royals? What the hell was this?

Well, Carlos Lee is as advertised. Was 3-4 with a walk. Wasn't his problem.

Sigh. It was a really fabulous defensive play by Joey Gathright, though.

I know the party's not over, but now were the last two games disappointing.

Vicente Padilla had nothing. He looked weak, and had over 30 pitches in the first inning alone. He was lucky to escape the first inning with just one run given up. We did tie it up in the bottom of the first, which I'm sure made everyone feel good.

But then it got really REALLY ugly in the top of the second, and that's not even Padilla. The Rangers comitted two errors, and one was particuarly heinous, it looked like something out of little league, or a videogame. The not so bad one was Ian Kinsler dropping a ball thrown in from the outfield which allowed a run to score. But the particuarly heinous one was Gary Matthews in center whiffing on a ball, allowing it to roll all the way to the wall. By the time they retireived it out there, the Royal batter had come around third, and scored on that play. Ugly! There was one to my eyes at the park looked like an error but wasn't counted as such - a ball got by Mark DeRosa in right which I thought should have been an error, but it wasn't. We did actually get a true third error in the game later on when Mike Young had a fielding one. UGLY!

All of that combined to allow a big ol' five spot for the Royals in the second. That was the game. Yeah, we managed to piece together a few more runs in the 6th & 8th, but after the second inning, the game was essentially over. Benoit did pretty good in relief, as did Ron Mahay, but John Wasdin allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to add insult to injury.

However, one positive note was the debut of Carlos Lee. Wearing #45 (RA Dickey's old number), Lee made an immediate impact. Playing DH tonight, he went two for four - two singles in his first two at bats. Lee got a standing ovation as he came to the plate in the second inning, and was pretty well applauded after that from what I saw. I'll talk more about the trade over the weekend, I'll try and leave it out of here.

I was at this game tonight. We wnated to be there for the Build a Bear giveaway, and Samantha did fine for awhile, but she hit her wall, as the game started only half an hour before her bedtime anyway. She was having fun for awhile, but in the fourth, she hit the wall. We had to leave in the fifth inning, which is very unlike me, but the welfare of the kid comes first. I am going again Saturday night (by myself), so that will be different.

I did take some pictures during the game of a few things - I had decent seats, so I got some nice shots of some of the guys at the plate. Check out my pictures by clicking on the Carlos Lee thumbnail pic here.

You know, two seasons ago, Ryan Drese was busted on live TV making a gesture at a cameraman. Remember that? That's what I feel right now about the Yankees.

As is my policy on games we lose to the Yankees, I will not write about this one.

Except this. I was at this game. It was hot. It was fairly entertaining booing A-rod. :)

Game just ended. In keeping up with my personal policy on Yankee games, I will not write about it. Except this. Tex's home run went further than 420 feet.

The Rangers have now been shut out for the fifth time in the month of July alone! We lost the series finale to the White Sox, 5-0.

Jon Garland went 8 plus innings, giving up just 6 hits. He also irritated his manager when he wouldn't intentionally hit Ian Kinsler - Ozzie Guillen needs to chill the hell out regarding hitting people. Yeah, everyone knows it's done, but stfu already, dude.

Anyway, Vicente Padilla only actually gave up one earned run in his 7 innings pitched. There were three more unearned runs. Don't ever like giving up that many runs.

Starting to get a little concerned that we've now been shut out this many times in one month.

John Koronka started this game, and after the first inning I don't think many people would have thought he would have gone as deep as he did (6 innings). Koronka threw something like 35 pitches in the first inning. He walked the bases full, but escaped with no runs scored. I don't remember how many pitches he threw in the second, but it was a lot there too. Koronka ended up throwing 100 pitches in all, and gave up just three hits and one run in all. Not a bad outing given how I thought it was going to be at the start.

Our bullpen was quite good too - four guys going three innings, and giving up just two hits and no runs. That's just 5 hits total to the World Champs.

On the other side, we only had one more hit than Chicago did. Freddy Garcia pitched a great game too, going 7 innings, giving up just 4 hits and one run. In fact, it was tied 1-1 going into the ninth.

Ozzie Guillen sent out his closer to presumably keep us off the board, so they could win in the bottom of the ninth. Didn't work out that way, as we loaded the bases up, and then came All Star Game MVP Mike Young - he got one of his usual base hits to right scoring two, and giving us the win.

Otsuka got the save, and the Rangers took the series in Chicago, so let's see if I can break out the sweep graphic for the first time in awhile tomorrow.

The big bats came out in Chicago tonight, the Rangers apparently showing no ill effects of their tri city tour yesterday.

The bats came alive again, putting the Rangers into double digit runs for the first time since the first game after the All-Star break. It was defintely powered by the longball. We bashed four of them, two off of starter Mark Buehrle, who we beat up on again. Buehrle actually went seven innings, but gave up 5 earned runs. Chicago trotted out three relivers after Buherle, all of which gave up runs, too.

Texas sent out five pitchers of their own. John Wasdin started the game, but was pulled after just 3.2 innings, only having given up 2 runs, which I felt was kind of odd. Following Wasdin was Ron Mahay, who was credited with the win. Wes Littleton, CJ Wilson, & Rick Bauer all followed - they combined for just one run allowed (Littleton).

But again, this was the game of the home run. Mike Young, Mark Teixeira, & Brad Wilkerson hit three, but the best one was Kevin Mench. He had a three run home run which at the time put us up 9-3. This was Kevin's first home run since early June.

Nice way to get my regular updating started up again. :)

Well, I'm back. As the White Sox series is about to start later this evening, I need to get back into things. I probably could have updated for the Toronto series, but I got lazy. As I wrote before, I was home on a two week trip to Pennsylvia to visit my family and my wife's. While we were in Pittsburgh, we attended Fanfest, which was a lot of fun. I did post some pictures of that online, you can see them here. As a lot of games passed between my last update and now I'll have rather short recaps of them. Most of them I didn't even see being out of town. :)

June 28th: Rangers lose to Giants, 5-1. The big deal in this one was a grand slam that John Rheinecker gave up to Ray Durham. Of course the Rangers only pushed across one run of their own - only getting one extra base hit. While we lost by 4, this game felt like a game where we lost by just 1. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

June 29th: Rangers lose to Giants, 2-1. Even more maddening than the 5-1 loss, or the fiasco that was the foul/fair ball of Teixeira's for me. 2-1 games mean one thing - you didn't hit well enough to win. A great start (6IP, 4H, 1ER) was wasted by John Koronka. He was bested by Jason Schmidt (7IP, 5H, 1ER). Ian Kinsler had two of the 5 hits, we had not much going on. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

June 30th: Rangers beat Astros, 3-1. Padilla beats Oswalt. Vicente Padilla, who has become our hottest pitcher of late bested Roy Oswalt in Arlington. Oswalt even pitched a complete game (8IP, 9H, 3ER), but still got the loss. That was because the Astros were dominated by Padilla. Vicente went 8 innings, giving up just 4 hits and 1ER. Otsuka got his 16th save of the season. If I wasn't headed out of town on a trip in two days, I probably would have been at this game. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 1st: Rangers lose to Astros, 7-0. Another shutout. Four Houston pitchers combined on a 3 hit shutout of the Rangers. Man, we had NOTHING this game. John Wasdin technically had a quality start, but was nowhere near sniffing a win. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 2nd: Rangers lose to Astros, 9-5. The first of the games I didn't get to see, as I was in Philadelphia by the time the game started. I did see on ESPN about Millwood having to come out of the game early. At the time I thought it was going to be bad, but it turns out not to be. Not a very well pitched game by Texas, giving up 16 hits with 3 walks. There goes the Silver boot to Houston. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 3rd: Rangers beat Blue Jays, 6-1. John Rheinecker turned in a great performance, going 7 innings, giving up just one run on 5 hits. He was followed up by Coco & Bryan Corey for the win. Mark DeRosa had a home run, and Kinsler, Laird, & Mike Young (two) had doubles in this one. From the line score, it appeared we didn't get it into gear until late, scoring 5 of our six runs in the 6th, 7th, & 8th. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 4th: Rangers lose to Blue Jays, 3-2. John Koronka took a tough loss, going 8 innings total, giving up just three runs, but was bested by former Cy Young winner, Roy Halladay. Halladay went 7.2 Innings, gave up no runs. We tried to come back against BJ Ryan, but couldn't seal the deal. Mike Young got his 1,000th career hit, if his health holds up, I think 3,000 will be no problem for him at all. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 5th: Rangers beat Blue Jays, 9-3. Vicente Padilla got his 8th win of the season tonight, going 6.2 innings, giving up 3 runs. But we more tha covered that by doing a number on the Toronto staff. Toronto ran four pitchers out there, none of them escaped unscathed. Casey Janssen took the worst of it, going just 3.1 innings, giving up 5ER. We had 5 doubles and four home runs in this one. Lots of offense here (14 hits total). [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 6th: Off day for Rangers. I was at a Phillies game this night. Had seriously great seats, just two rows between me and the home dugout. Got to see closeups of Pat Burrell striking out.

July 7th: Rangers beat Twins, 9-4. Like the last game against the Jays, the Rangers got out fast, scoring 8 of their nine runs in the first three innings. Again, we had four doubles, and two home runs this game - most of which came in the first three innings. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 8th: Rangers lose to Twins, 4-0. The second time we were shut out this month. This time we were closed down by Francisco Liriano (and two relievers). We could get only six hits in all (2 by DeRosa). John Rheinecker didn't pitch bad again (6IP, 3ER), but was beat by someone else. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 9th: Rangers beat Twins, 5-2. In a surprise, John Koronka beat Johan Santana. Johan Santana seemed to melt, based on the fact that of the 5ER he gave up, 4 of them were in his final two innings. John Koronka picked up the win in this game, although he went the minimum 5 to get it. Two home runs this game, one by Tex, one by Matthews. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 10th: I attended the Fanfest in Pittsburgh this day. Was a lot of fun - I posted some pictures of it online here. My wife got to meet and talk to Jackie Robinson's daughter, and I noticed Billy Ripken hanging out in the baseball card show, stopped to talk to him for a bit - that was quite fun, too.

July 11th: Mike Young was the All-star game MVP. It was quite cool to see that. Really nice to see him get some national press. My wife and I hung out in a local bar for the start of the All Star game. We were probably the only people clapping for the AL players, and specifically Mike Young and Gary Matthews, but it was nice to have that kind of communal fun. We ate dinner at this place, was quite nice.

July 12th: Off day - no baseball.

July 13th: Rangers beat Orioles, 15-1. Bombs away is the word here. Mark Teixeira led the way in this one with a career high 3 home runs, as well as 7 RBI's. We had six home runs in all, as well as two doubles. Offense all over the place. Of the 11 different batters we sent up there, only Jerry Hairston didn't get a hit, and he was a late inning sub anyway. All our starting 9 had hits. Vicente Padilla had a great game here too, but that kind of got buried behind all the offense. Padilla went 7, giving up 4 hits and just 1 earned run. He continues to roll. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 14th: Rangers beat Orioles, 2-1. Our offense disappeared after last night. We could only garner 4 hits in all, but it was enough, as we won 2-1 over Kris Benson and the Orioles. Benson did what Oswalt did a week ago or so, pitch a complete game aginst the Rangers, but lost. Kevin Millwood showed no ill effects of his early exit last time out. He went 6, gave up just one run, and the trio of Bauer/Cordero/Otsuka sealed the win, earning Aki his 18th save, and in my opinion the pole position for the closer's job in 2007. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 15th: Rangers lose to Orioles, 8-1. Uh, hello? Where'd our offense go? After the outburst to start the second half, we haven't done much since. Two runs yesterday on four hits, one run on six hits tonight. Rheinecker got bombed, giving up 7ER in 3.2IP - that was pretty much the game in a nutshell. Our pitcher got bombed, and we broke out the no hit sticks. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 16th: Rangers lose to Orioles, 4-0. Not only did our offense actually get worse by getting shut out for the third time this month (and it's only half over), we also tossed in three errors for good measure. Blech. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 17th: Rangers lose to Blue Jays, 10-1. OK, this is getting sad. In the the last four games, we've gotten a total of 4 runs. Not only that, John Koronka stunk up the joint this game, giving up 9ER in 3.2IP. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 18th: Rangers beat Blue Jays, 5-2. It's still sad when we win the game, and score more runs than we did in the previous four combined without getting to double digits. However, it wasn't all nice, as we scored all five of our runs in the 8th inning - it looked like we were well on our way to another scoreless game at that point - I have to admit. I did see this one, but only from the seventh inning onwards, so I got to see all the fun. All those runs came right in time too, as Padilla had just come out of the game after pitching 7 innings, giving up just two runs - he deserved the win. Fortunately our bats came alive at exactly the right time to get Vicente his 10th win of the season. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 19th: Rangers beat Blue Jays, 5-4. We had another game like last night, where we had donut through six innings (well, OK 1 run, but it felt like less), and then picked up four in the 7th frame and then held on for the win. Kevin Millwood joined Vicente Padilla as a game winner on the staff. Assuming he picks up a win on his other start in the remainder of July, that would give him 11, and a pace to get about 16 or so - maybe 17 depending on how that "half a win" falls. :) We were led here by Gerald Laird, who went 2 for 3 (two doubles) and scored twice. Gary Matthews was the beneficiary of that, getting two RBI's. Mark DeRosa also had a line drive opposite field home run in this game, too. [ MLB.com recap of game ]

July 20th: Rangers lose to the Red Sox, 6-4. A makeup game from all the rain we had in Boston on our trips in there. This was a scheduled day off, but it made for quite an intersting travel day for the Rangers, being in three towns in one day. Rheinecker got hit around a bit again, going just 3.2IP, giving up 8 hits and 4 ER. That's pretty similar to Curt Schilling's line too, except Schill went 7, doubling more or less Rheinecker's distance. The difference here is that Bryan Corey also gave up 2ER in his inning plus for the Rangers, while nobody from the Boston pen gave up anything. Offensively we had two doubles this game on a total of 11 hits. And now we're off to Chicago for a few games there. Do we still have a ballpark? I haven't seen a game at home in almost two whole months it feels, and this all seems like road games. :) [ MLB.com recap of game ]

And there we are. All caught up. Now time to get back to the grind of doing daily updates again.

Tom Grieve probably had to restrain himself from swearing over the air. He seemed cheesed off. As well he should be. The Giants ought to put out a bigger food spread for the umps or something, as they owe them for this, big time.

I only saw the end of the game, as I had some work work to do tonight - I saw just the ninth inning. What a fiasco that was. Man. I don't know how to write about this game. Yeesh.

UPDATE: Tom Hicks apparently has discussed this situation with Bud Selig. Details here.

Vicente Padilla didn't pitch bad in this game at all. He went 6 innings, gave up three runs. Should have been enough for a win. But it was not. In fact, just the first one would have been enough, as the Rangers were shutout by the Rockies, 3-0.

After Padilla, Bryan Corey & Rick Bauer each pitched an inning, giving up no more runs.

However, against Byung-Hung Kim, Jose Mesa, & Brian Fuentes, we could manage only 5 hits (all against Kim). Two of those hits were by Jerry Hariston (both bloops over the second baseman as well, not hit well).

That's the story of this game. No offense. In Coors Field. Humidor be damned, I want my 30 runs a game in Denver back!

Well, we gave up on Fabio Castro yesterday, as the Rule 5 pick was designated for assignment to make room for Robinson Tejeda who started on Saturday. Tejeda was lit up - BIG TIME, and is supposed to be sent back out again today before Sunday afternoon's game starts. That sequence of events kind of reminds me on how we lost Doug Davis to a roster squeeze a couple of years ago, actually.

Anyway, Tejeda just plain stunk up the joint. He gave up a big old ugly 6 spot in the bottom of the first inning. We never quite recovered from that. In all Tejeda gave up two singles, two walks, a double, and then a three run home run to cap it all off. In fact, probably the only reason it wasn't worse was that Tejeda struck out the pitcher to end the inning.

And then it rained - which prompted a very funny story from Tom Grieve about his time in the minors around 1970 or so in Colorado when a tarp blew up and into the stands. That was a great story by Tom. Watching the Rockies guys struggling with the wind reminds me of that now classic footage from the 1993 Fla Marlins season when they had some serious tarp issues.

Anyway, when we came back from the rain delay, I was supriginsly still watching. Tejeda was sent back out, and gave up another run in the second inning for a total of 7. Tejeda actually went three innings total, giving up 7ER on 7H, 3BB, and 2 HR. Not good. Not good at all. I bet there's a lot of Ranger fans right now that wish we still had David Dellucci. In fact, I bet Dellucci still wishes that, given how little playing time he's gotten in Philly.

We actually tried to make a game of it in the middle innings. After four innings, we were down 9-1. We picked up a four spot, to make it 9-5, and the momentum seemed to back on our side. However, Jack Benoit gave up two runs in the bottom of the 6th to make it 11-5, and that was it for the scoring for the rest of the game, save for a solo home run by Mark Teixeira in the 9th inning to make it 11-6.

It felt like we tried to come back, but when Benoit couldn't keep 'em off the board, we lost what little momentum we had. The game really seemed out of reach after the first inning, however. I'm surprised I watched the entire game, I usually give up on games like that, and do something else, but this time I stuck with it. :)

First game I've gotten to watch completely in awhile, although I spent most of the time actually perusing my company's public forums for contiuning reaction to our game release a few days ago. :)

This was a Coors Field game. Lots of offense. It's not like the score was 19-14, but 8-6 is still a decent amount of offense. It didn't start out that way. Through five innings, the score was a pretty non altitude assisted 4-1. Then the floodgates opened in the sixth inning. Check out what happened in the sixth for the Rangers:

- M. DeRosa struck out swinging
- M. Young grounded out to shortstop
- M. Teixeira doubled to deep left
- H. Blalock singled to right center, M. Teixeira scored, H. Blalock to second advancing on throw
- K. Mench singled to center, H. Blalock scored
- G. Laird doubled to deep left, K. Mench scored
- I. Kinsler intentionally walked
- J. Botts hit for J. Koronka
- S. Dohmann relieved J. Francis
- J. Botts singled to center, G. Laird scored, I. Kinsler to third
- G. Matthews Jr. grounded out to second

And that was just the sixth. It was a bit more flashy in the seventh.

- M. DeRosa popped out to shallow right center
- M. Young doubled to deep center
- M. Teixeira homered to deep right center, M. Young scored
- H. Blalock homered to deep right center
- K. Mench grounded out to second
- G. Laird struck out swinging

Blalock's home run there was the 100th of his career. John Koronka got the win, but just barely. He was pulled for a pinch hitter (Botts, who got a single), and we took the lead before Scott Feldman came in to replace Koronka. The shine is off Koronka from the great start he had, but he's definitely a servicable starter, so that trade worked out pretty well.

We added five more doubles this game (Young 2, Laird 2, & Tex). We have about 900 so far this season it seems. There were the aforementioned home runs by Tex & Blalock (going back to back). In all we had twelve hits, and while it wasn't pretty, we got the win.

That's all that matters.

Well, as I said a couple of days ago, I've been busy, and haven't had time to update the site. My company released a new game demo (Prey, go check it out, although it is a "Mature" rated game). As such, my time was big time elsewhere. I missed a few games totally, as well as only half paid attention to the ones I did see. As such, I'm summarizing all the missed games in a quick update here. Just for completeness' sake, I guess.

Jun 17 - Beat Diamondbacks, 8-4: Matthews, Young lead team, going 2-4 each. Team hits for the cycle. Koronka gets a win. Of the 5 Rangers pitchers, Ron Mahay is the one with the most experience, and he was in the minors for awhile this season.

Jun 18 - Beat Diamondbacks, 10-7 for the series sweep. Kameron Loe was not good at all, giving up 4ER in 2.1IP. He goes on the DL after this start. Cordero blows another save; gets win. Mike Young goes 5-5 in the DH slot. Team hits for the cycle again. First three batters (Matthews, Young, Tex) have a combined 9 hits (out of the team's overall 15). Nice to break out the brooms.

Jun 19 - Off Day

Jun 20 - Lose to Padres, 6-5. Mark Teixeira had a spectacular defensive game. He had what looked like a game winning walk off home run, and was screwed by first base umpire Bill Welke. That's pretty much what people remember about this one.

Jun 21 - Lose to Padres, 3-2. Bill Welke strikes again. This time he's behind home plate, and blows a call on a play where Michael Young scored, but was called out. Given we lost by one run, that was huge. Former Ranger pitcher Chris Young returns and pitches well against the Rangers. Also had former Rangers Eric Young & Adrian Gonzalez in tow. And I know it's childish, but I still giggle like an 8 year old when I hear the name Barfield.

Jun 22 - Win against Padres, 5-3. John Rheinecker survived this game. He did get the win, but gave up eleven hits in 5.1IP to go with two walks. He's lucky he only gave up two runs with all that. Still more doubles for our insane doubles rate this season. Cordero doesn't blow a save. Blalock, Matthews, Young all 2-4. Nice to salvage a win before going on the road.

This game was about Kevin Millwood.

I was supposed to go to this game tonight to get the giveaway (the Build a Bear Bear) for my daughter, but I couldn't go - my wife got sick, and it was better if we didn't go. If anyone has an extra one of those, and wants to take pity on me, please let me know. :)

Definitely not John Rheinecker's best game. Actually, it was fairly bad. But given the way he's pitched in his games before this, I think no one is too bent out of shape over this one. Rhein gave up 11 hits and 5ER in four innings. Raised his season ERA to 3.60.

That's pretty much the story of this game. It was rematch of the game Rhein & Mark Buehrle, but this time the roles were reversed. Buehrle gave up 2ER over 8 IP.

Rhein & Buehrle's lines were the story of this game.

This was Vicente Padilla's game.

8 innings pitched
3 hits
0 runs
3 walks
7 strikeouts
2 beanings of AJ Pierzynski
109 pitches (70 for strikes)

The most telling moment for me was in the second inning when the Sox had 2 men on at second and third with nobody out, and nobody scored. That was the Sox best chance all night, and they couldn't capitalize.

On our offensive side, we hit around Javier Vazquez. Blalock started it with a solo home run in the third. We then hit him up for a four spot in the fourth. What's nice about that is that all four runs came with two outs. We extended our major league leading doubles lead with three more tonight (Blalock, Tex, Kinsler).

Gary Matthews continues to keep his grip on the CF job, and went 3-5 tonight with an rbi and a run scored. He continues to look great. Kinsler was 2-3, even Hairston was 2-4. Only Barajas & DeRosa were hitless. But DeRosa had the defensive gem of the night with a one handed grab of a ball hit into the ground. It was do or die, and he threw home, and kept the Sox off the scoreboard. Was a great play.

Was a great win over the World Series Champs. Keeps us in first place.

The Rangers lost last night. I only got to see the first part of it, and I've been too busy at work today to write an update.

I'll probalby have something to say later tonight when I update for tonight's game, too.

John Koronka did not pitch well. He gave up hits to 8 of the first 11 batters, and then, well - it was too late. Well, actually it wasn't, but the game felt out of hand almost immediately. Especially when going up against someone like Jose Contreras.

We had 32 at bats, and only got 6 hits out of all that. Barajas had two hits, and nobody else had more than 1. Barajas did have a two run homer in the fifth to make the score 6-3 at the time, but even then the game never felt that close at all. Just felt like we lost the game in the first inning.

Koronka stunk up the joint, giving up 6ER on 9H with 3BB over 4.2IP. Ugh. Benoit also gave up 2ER in his 3IP. Bauer finished up with 1.1IP and didn't give up any runs, but by that point it was all over.

It'd be nice to blame it on a lack of rest after the travel fiasco involved in getting out of Boston after a DH, but I wouldn't actually believe that.

After the rain on Saturday, we actually played a doubleheader on Sunday. Given I have several games to update tonight I won't write a lot about each.

Game 1: The early game started at 11AM, which means I didn't see much of it. I was at church when the game started, and since I had something scheduled to do in the afternoon, I didn't have the time to watch all of this game, in fact, I only saw less than an hour of this one. But this game can be boiled down to essentially two home runs. Kevin Mench jacked a two run home run ove the Monstah off Josh Beckett which broke a 2-2 tie. The game was going well until the ninth inning when Otsuka blew a save, which has been rather unusual this year. It was however on a three run walk off home run to David Ortiz. Giving up a home run to Ortiz isn't that unusual, but the game felt like ours - even when we were just tied. Just "felt" like we were going to come back and win. And that did happen, until the final pitch of the game. Here is the MLB.com update for this game.

Game 2: When Game two started I was in a movie theatre in Plano seeing the new Pixar flick Cars on a DLP screen (which I highly recommend over a conventional movie theatre). I didn't get to see this game until later in the evening, and I accidentally saw the score before I finished watching ghe game, so that got ruined for me. I then flew threw the game in about 20 minutes on TiVo.

We had SIX more doubles this game. But outside those doubles, we had 16 more hits this game, all singles apparently. Mark DeRosa was 4-6, Tex was 3-6, there were hits all over the place. All of our starters had at least one hit (Matthews & DeRosa each had four). This one was a nice bounceback after the major disappointment of game one. Given I saw so little of teh games today, I'm gonna leave it at this, but since this was all about offense and numbers, I suggest checking out the box score below and reading that. Here is the MLB.com update for this game.

After a few attempts to play, and after a rather lengthy rain delay, the Rangers and the Red Sox finally got a game in on Saturday. As just about every angle of the game's weather conditions has been covered, I'll try not to write about that.

Johnny R pitched for us (I still have a hard time typing in and getting right the name Rheinecker), and didn't pitch as good as his first couple of outings, but then again, nobody else has pitched like that, either. Rhein went only 5.2 innings in this one, giving up 3ER on 9 hits with three strikeouts. With those kinds of numbers, I'm surprised he didn't give up more than three. Given the odd timing of the game due to weather, I didn't get to see all of it; but from what I saw, he seemed what his line indicated - just "OK".

However, right after that came Bryan Corey. When he was called up, I made a snide comment about him, not exactly rude, but not exactly pleasant, either. However, at least for this game, he silenced all critics. He faced four batters, struck out all four of them. I did see this, it looked great. Obviously that kind of record won't hold up, but wow did that look good. :) Cordero & Otsuka followed up, and Cordero gave up a run, Otsuka got the save.

Offensively, we were led by Blalock & DeRosa, who were 3-4 & 2-5 respectively. The remainder of the team garnered just four hits collectively. Blalock had a home run off of former Sox closer Keith Foulke in the ninth inning. We also had three more doubles, which really seems like our strength this season.

I wrote the above text on Monday night around 10:30PM, so my memory is a bit foggy. I did write some text on Saturday when this originally happened; that text is here:

---

Rangers beat the Sox in the one game that was actually played today. I'll have something about it later. Wouldn't mind a free hot dog or two, though.

The other one that was supposed to be played today was postponed and there will be a doublehader tomorrow. The first game starts at 11AM Dallas time, and the second at 4PM (presuming there isn't a 16 inning game or something).

Both games will be on Fox Sports Southwest according to Josh Lewin during tonight's game.

Here's the official Rangers press release.

Well, today we had a day night doubleheader. The day game was technically a rainout makeup game from a few weeks back, and tonight's game was the regularly scheduled game.

About half an hour ago, tonight's game was postponed. As of right now, they're still supposed to play the technical makeup game from the first part of the doubleheader.

The regularly scheduled game for tonight (which is now not being played) has no makeup date left. It's amusing, as the games a few weeks back had two makeups. One was today, the other one was a date in the future (which I can't recall at the moment). That game was also as I recall on one of the lone common off days the two teams had. No clue when they're gonna make up the postponed game from tonight.

Tomorrow, perhaps? Course we then have to come back home for a 6PM game in Arlington on Monday. Yeesh, what a mess.

Well, we lost our second game in a row, 4-3 to the Red Sox. While no one ever truly likes losing, this 4-3 loss to the Sox is far more pallatlable than that complete stinkbomb in Kansas City the night before. Mr Yuck, indeed!

I had forgotten the game started at 6PM, so when I was driving home from work, I tuned in about 6:50 for the pre-game stuff, and the game was in the bottom of the second, and we were down 3-0 already. Not a good way to start. We did pick up a couple when Michael Young jacked a Tim Wakefield ball over the Monstah for a two run home run. That was pretty much it for offense, save for an RBI single by Hank Blalock over closer of the year Jonathan Papplebon in the 8th. In all we had eight hits, half of them by Gary Matthews & Mike Young. The other four were scattered amongs four players who got one each. We did get two more doubles tonight (DeRosa, Matthews) to extend our MLB leading lead in that category.

Vicente Pidente Padilla took the mound for us tonight. His start reminded me of Kevin Millwood's the other day - not dominating, in fact bordering on falling over the edge, but when you look at the total line, it was a decent game, and that's the bottom line, I guess. Well, no, wins and losses are, but that's not completely under the control of the pitcher. Padilla went 7 giving up 3ER (all in the first) on 9 hits, 6 strikeouts, and one walk. Not a bad outing at all.

Still, it ended up as a loss. We go into a day night doubleheader saturday. I love doubleheaders. I hate day night doubleheaders, though. Especially at home. Blech. Speaking of that, have the Rangers ever done a day/night doubleheader? I can't recall one in recent memory - can you?

I'll say this, Sox fans seem to really love Kevin Youkilis by the reaction of them to just about anything he did. I always wished we had some guy like that where the whole place got excited about no matter what. Been awhile.

Anyone think that we'll extend Gary Matthews & Mark DeRosa at the end of this season? I think Matthews has played himself into a possible long term solution in center. As much as I like Laynce Nix, I can't argue against what Matthews has done up here - sustained success is something Nix has yet to achieve, unfortunately.

Anyone think that the thing with Jason Grimsley sounds like something from a CSI episode or something? There seems like a lot more "drama" then there has been with some of the other big names that have gotten in "trouble" (unofficially, of course)?

What the HELL was that mess? I mean...

As I've said many many times before, I detest going up against young pitchers on other teams, making either their major league debuts, or have only pitched a game or two. These guys knock us out. Tonight was no different.

We went up against KC rookie Bobby Keppel. who I believe was making only his third or fourth start. And, true to form, he kept us off the board. It wasn't for a lack of trying though; we had several balls to the warning track that died just before going over the fence. Still, we were shut out for 8+ innings.

Keppel went into the ninth, and gave up a single to the first batter he faced, Hank Blalock. Following that, Buddy Bell went to his bullpen and brought in Ambiroix Burgos. While I understand Bell's decision to go to the pen in the ninth with your rookie protecting just a two run lead, the Royals' pen has the worst ERA in the American League (what a stunner), with about a 6. Burgos came in, gave up a single to DeRosa, struck out Wilkerson, and then hit Mench, loading the bases. Kinsler hit a sac fly to break up the shutout, making it 2-1. Barajas was down to 0-2 with two outs, and blooped a single into left, tying the game at two.

Bell brought in Elmer Dessens to try and stop the bleeding, but it didn't help. Gary Matthews Jr, who I hope gets an All-Star nod, doubled to left, scoring Barajas & Hairston (who had run for Mench). That put us up 4-2 for the eventual win, amidst rather a lot of boos from the few fans who were there in Kansas City.

John Koronka had the ball for us. Koronka, who has been one of 2006' better surprises has slipped a bit his last couple of starts. He did however pitch pretty well this game. He went 6.1 innings, giving up two runs (QS) on 6 hits with 2BB, and 1K. He got a no decision, but i think he needed to have a good outing line score wise. I don't think he was in danger of losing his job or anything - but you don't want to have too many bad starts in a row.

Our bullpen was much better than KC's (again, not hard). Alfonseca, Otsuka, & Cordero pitched, and din't give up any runs. Now Otsuka set up Cordero, but I think that only happened because we scored a bunch of runs in the top of the 9th to take the lead, I think the idea was to get Otsuka work in the 8th, and that was it. I don't think this was a formal change back to Corder as closer.

Oakland lost, so our lead in the West is back to 4 and a half games. I still maintain it's not great, as we have the worst record of any of the six division leaders, but it's still nice to say "First place Rangers" again. Been awhile since I could say that.

Also, I got a laugh out of what MLB.com's game wrapup had as a headline for this game.. Fab four sings in No. 9 I doubt whoever wrote that will see this text, but if you do, it made me laugh. :)

First off, let me say it was nice to see the Rangers win in Kansas City. It seems to me that we've had this mental block there where we can't win in recent years. Course this year with the Royals already 150 games back and 0-500 this season it seems, we had a shot. :)

Texas retains their hold on first place with a win in Kansas City. Kevin Millwood took the hill for Texas. On the road this year, he's been the same pitcher he was last year, no walks at all (until tonight), and a bunch of strikeouts with an ERA under 3. At home he's been well, not that pitcher. But on the road, he's been great. Tonight he labored a lot. His overall line shows a quality start (7 innings pitched, 2 earned runs, 7 hits, 5 K, 1 BB), but he really labored. He had I think over 60 pitches (or clsoe to it) after 3, and from some of the camera shots they were showing of him in the dugout between innings, he seemed flushed, like the heat was a bother to him. Still, you can't argue with the ultimate line, and that's the mark of a good top of the rotation guy. Even when he's not dominating, he finds a way to get the job done, and he did. A well deserved win, I thought.

Offensively, we got several more doubles (4, Young, Tex, Mench, & Laird) - we're leading the AL in doubles as a team. Our home runs are down this year, but our doubles are way up. Speaking of home runs, we got a couple of those, too. One from Brad Wilkerson (filling the 666 nonsense we're hearing about today - Uniform #6 got a HR out of the 6 hole on 6/6/06), and one from Ian Kinsler. Kinsler's double was alomst another home run, so he had some nice power tonight, as well as three RBI's. We had 11 hits in all, and they were nicely scattered - only Mark Teixeira didn't get at least one hit.

As for Kansas City? Well, they still have a nice ballpark even if it's been bombed with advertisements the last 5 years or so. It is still a park I want to travel to see. Oh yeah, the other memorable moment for Kansas City reliever Danny Bautista uncorked a wild pitch that bounced off the ground and ended up (according to Josh Lewin) about twenty rows into the stands. That reminds me of that old classic baseball clip you see in blooper reels of a Yankees pitcher (forget who now) who goes to pitch, and the ball goes flying way out of his hands straight up, and lands on that screen that is behind home plate in Yankee Stadium, and rolls back down towards the field of play. If you've watched enough blooper reels, you should know that pitch. It's been that kind of year for the Royals when I remember that kind of thing for them in a game, and not anything "good".

I got pretty sick on Friday evening, and it carried over through Saturday and into Sunday.

Because of that, I fell asleep watching Friday night's game three seperate times, and Saturday night's wasn't much better. While I was conciuous I was dealing with some issues that decorum prohibits me from discussing here. Suffice it to say my mind wasn't all there. I'll look back at the games, and write something quick about them.

Friday: (W: 4-3) Kameron Loe & Jon Garland had similar lines, going 6 or so innings, giving up 3 earned runs (although Loe gave up twice as many hits (10-5) as Garland did). The bullpens were the story here. Chicago's gave up one run, ours none. That was the difference. We had one home run (Wilkerson), and three doubles tonight (Tex, Young, & Matthews). Francisco Cordero picked up the win (his 5th), and I think puts him up there with our team leaders in wins. Otsuka got his 10th save. [ MLB.com Recap ]

Saturday: (L: 8-6) Vicente Padilla was pulled early in this game after throwing only 3.1IP. He gave up 7 hits and 7ER on 3BB and 4K. That was pretty much the game there. Chicago put up a rather ugly 7 spot in the fourth inning, and while we got a ltitle momentum back with a 3 spot in the top of the fifth, we couldn't rally enough. We lost the game 8-6. Gary Matthews continued to be hot going 3 for 5 with 2 doubles, and a run scored. Blalock & Young were also 3-5. We had 13 hits overall, but it just wasn't enough, we couldn't overcome the pitching of Padilla tonight. [ MLB.com Recap ]

Sunday: (W: 10-2): This was the game I knew the least about actually. I was feeling better Sunday, so I did some errands. I did hear parts of the game as I was driving around town, but it's hard to get a grasp when you hear half an inning here, a few batters there. Looking at the line, John Rheinecker pitched his second great start in a row, and is now 2-0 with us. Rhien went 8 innings, giving up just 2ER on 7 hits with no walks and four strikeouts. Another well pitched game from him; hopefully that can conitnue, as I can't see us sending out someone who is pitching that well. We bombed Mark Buehrle to the tune of 6 earned runs over 7 innings pitched. Mark didn't help himself with four walks, either. Jerry Hairston Jr got into the action, and did make an error in his first Ranger game. Hairston went 0-4, but did walk once and scored. Mark Teixeira was red hot this game, going 4-5 with two doubles. But as hot as he was, it didn't compare to Gerald Laird. Laird was 4 for 5 also, but had two doubles AND two home runs with 4 RBI's. A great day for Gerald - hopefully the tide starts to turn back to him, as I don't think Barajas will be here next year. Time to give Gerald his job back that he lost due to injury. [ MLB.com Recap ]

Tomorrow night we go into Kansas City for game against the woeful Royals. I'm sure we'll lose 2 out of 3, as we seem to have a mental block that disallows us from playing good there.

Mama said there'd be days like this.
There'd be days like this momma said.

OK, it's game 53, and we haven't had much in the way of total shellackings. There's always a handful of those you have to suffer through in a season. Nothing much good generally comes out of them. This night was no better.

No one escaped. We sent four pitchers out there (Koronka, Benoit, Bauer, Wilson), and all four of them stunk up the joint, although Benoit the least of them. The combined line for the four pitchers was 9IP, 18 hits, 14 earned runs, 6 walks (although none by Koronka), and 6 strikeouts. Koronka gave up the lone home run allowed by Ranger pitching.

The only good bit was in the fifth inning when Gary Matthews Jr hit a grand slam, I believe our second in two days. I also seem to recall that we now hold the major league record for grand slams or something in 2006.

As ugly as this game was, we still took two out of three, and a series win is always good.

I didn't see much of this game, as I had some household responsibilities tonight. I did see some of it, and from the Rangers point of view, I saw the most important inning, the third. I wasn't happy at the top of the third when we were down 3-0, as Millwood seems to continue his streak of not pitching well in Arlington.

But then the bottom of the third Mike Young jacked a ball into the bullpen which put us within a run, we were down 3-2 at the time. Then Mark Teixeira singled. Hank Blalock followed up with another single, and then Mark DeRosa walked, loading the bases for Brad Wilkerson. Wilkerson hit what he says he thought was a sac fly to right, but it kept carrying and carrying and it cleared the wall for a grand slam. That put us up 6-2, and it felt good.

But then we tried to give it away from that point on. We had a total of four errors tonight. We hung on, and for the second night in a row, Carl Everett ended the game. Last night it was a fly to right, tonight it was a called strikeout that brought out just a tad of the Boston era Carl Everett. Course Raul Ibanez did his best Boston Everett impression in the first after being called out on a strike.

The Mariners seem again to be a "not much going on" team. They just look lethargic. If you want to see what Mariner fans are thinking, check out the USS Mariner site. They're practically in complete revolt over there.

I don't have much else to add to this, not having seen most of the game, but a win is a win. We've now won three in a row, and have a 28-24 record, and were technically 4.5 games up in the West at the end of the game. However, before we get all excited about that, it's the worst record of a division leaader of the six divisions. A division lead is always a good thing, but when you're the lowest seed in that department it doesn't fare well for the playoffs, IMO. If you take the Rangers record and plop it into the other divisions, this is where they'd stand.

AL East:
Fourth place, behind Boston, New York, & Toronto, 2.5 games back

AL Central:
Third, behind the Tigers & White Sox, 6 games back

NL East:
Second, behind the Mets, 2.5 games back

NL Central:
Tied second with Reds, behind Cardinals, 5 games back

NL West:
Third, behind Diamondbacks & Dodgers, 2.5 games back

While it's fun to say we're in first place, it's not the greatest first place. If we were 10 games over 500 or something I might be more excited about it. It's a cautious excitement for now.

Also, congrats to Chris Young, who came close to a no hitter, taking it into 8 tonight against the Rockies.

Eight & 1/3 innings pitched
Four hits allowed
Zero runs allowed
One walk allowed
One extremely huge standing ovations
First major league win
Twenty Seventh Birthday

I don't know how my meager words could do justice to what John Rhinecker did on the mound Monday night. What a birthday present from him, and the shaving cream pie he got in the face from Kevin Mench in the post game show was a great moment. All I hope is that this performance doesn't get him sent back to AAA. I think he should definitely be allowed at least one more start. I mean.. Wow.

Jarrod Washburn had a great game himself, going 7 innings, giving up just six hits and two earned runs. The runs were on his only real mistake, a home run by Mark Teixeira in the sixth inning, which barely cleared the left field scoreboard wall. But it was enough.

Freddie Bynum is hitting .222 with 2 HR & 6 RBI and 3 SB. Juan Dominguez is 4-5 with a 6.22 ERA in 10 games over 46.1 IP. I think all Ranger fans should send a thank you card to Billy Beane out in Oakland for this one. Does anyone miss Juan Dominguez at the moment? When does John Koronka pitch again?

Oh, and Jamey, I'm not forgetting the PTBNL. I want to steal someone else. We have two steals in this three team trade, let's go for the trifecta. Let's get greedy. ;)

Oh yeah, we won 2-0. :)

Well, I was tired yesterday from doing a bunch of yardwork in the morning, so by the time the game rolled around I was pretty tired. I fell asleep duing the game, and missed most of it - I woke up, and saw the score, so most of what happened I didn't see.

I did however, get to see Jason Botts' first career home run - a no doubter into the upper home run porch. I also saw Botts' double. In all, Jason had two hits. Ian Kinsler, the other rookie playing this game also had two hits, going 2 for 4 with an RBI (a broken bat check swing at a ball about to hit his head). In fact, the entire rest of the team only had two more hits (Barajas/Blalock). We managed only 6 hits total, but made 'em count. We were outhit, yet won the game.

Both starters gave up all the runs (Padilla, 3, Saarloos - 4) Otsuka got his 8th save for the Rangers. Cordero did pitch before him, but was quite wild, giving up two hits and a walk, although not allowing anyone to score.

It was a nice game as everyone else in the division lost, so we're now three games out in first over the A's, and give over both the Mariners (whom we play tonight) and the Angels.

Usually, when the Rangers are going up against Barry Zito, it means a loss. This game is no different. We lost to Barry Zito. Except for a short moment of wildness in the bottom of the sixth, he was pretty untouchable. If you take out the events of the bottom of the sixth, Zito's line would be: 7.1IP, 3H, 0ER, 2BB, 7K. A pretty impressive line. Howerver, in the bottom of the sixth, Zito hit Teixeira, walked Blalock, and then gave up a three run home run to Phil Nevin. Other than that, Zito didn't allow much at all. His actual line was 7.1IP, 4H, 3ER, 3BB, 7K. It felt way more impressive than his real line indicates. Zito was also helped out by some sparkling defense by Eric Chavez, who made some really REALLY impressive plays at third, and probably helped out Zito's line.

Kameron Loe on the other hand was not impressive. He didn't stink up the joint, but he left a lot of pitches up, and gave up way too many hits. Loe went just 5.2IP, but gave up eleven hits in all, walking 2, striking out two. He also gave up 6 runs, although 2 were unearned. That was generous I thought, because the play in question didn't really look like a Blalock error, I thought it was a double, and it initially was ruled that, but was changed inbetween innings to an error, giving Loe just 4ER instead of 6. I'm sure Jay Payton didn't appreciate that.

Our bullpen was quite good, going a total of 3.1 innings of shutoutball. Four relievers (Wilson, Feldman, Mahay, Bauer) combined for just one hit (Bauer in the 9th) with 2K and 2BB.

However, due to the generally bad Oakland bullpen, Ken Macha left Zito out there as long as he could. Zito, who finally ran out of gas in the 8th after going 7.1 innings with 126 pitches gave way to Houston Street, who tonight acted like the closer, and only gave up a total of one hit in his 1.2 inning save.

The way Loe was pitching, it felt like it could have been a whole lot worse. I credit Zito for this game's outcome moreso than anything else that happened.

I wonder what that guy in the first row of Section 323 with the giant Rangers flag, and snakes all over the place thought of this? I sat behind him for a bit at last night's game, and assumed he was the Kam's Snake Pit guy, but I couldn't tell for sure. Assuming that was him, I'm sure he wasn't thrilled with the way Loe pitched tonight.

Well, I did something Friday night I haven't done in awhile, and that's attend a game in person. In years past, I'd attend on average 20-30 games a year. But, the high cost of going to these games, has slowed that way down. In 2006, I don't have season tickets for the first time since 1997 (save for 2002 when the wife and I bought a house). I went and figured out how much it actually costs me to go to a game, multiply that by say 20 a season, and GOOD GOD is that a lot of money. The tickets aren't actually the worst part. I live in Garland, roughly 35 miles from the Ballpark. Given I have to drive straight out Rt 30, and games start at 7PM, hello downtown Dallas mixmaster. Ugh - I've started to really detest driving out there, and there's been a couple times since my last game (Sun Apr 9) that I've thought of going, and then I think of the drive out, and I stay home. Given what my truck gets in gas mileage, it costs me $12 in gas alone to go to one game. Then there's $10 parking, and the ticket cost, and that's around $30 before I even buy a single thing. And that's just me - if I bring the wife and kid, the ticket cost is higher. I don't hate going to games, I just can't afford that many of them now. If there was some mass transit solution to Rangers games like the Cowboys had with Dart, (until they both got pissy over who was going to pay for it) I'd probably go to a lot more, as gas and parking are now the most expensive part of the equation.

Do what the Devil Rays are doing. Free parking for all games the whole season. I read that the team isn't happy with all the empty seats - well, do something to appease the fans. Raising ticket prices doesn't help. Sure, winning does, but that just brings out the fair weather fans when they're doing good. If you want sustained increased attendance, cut the prices somewhere, and I don't mean a $1 ice cream day, or a $1 hot dog day once in awhile. I'm talking about permanent price drops on the order of 25% of ticket revenue. $5 parking. $6.50 for a beer is stupid, I can buy an entire six pack at home for that.

As long as I'm ranting about prices, I did discover a new trick in the 2006 season to get cheap tickets. Buy the Kids Jr. Rangers program. Even if you don't have a kid, invent one. The reason is it costs $15, and you get a lot of free stuff for that $15. You get a gift for each month of the year (which so far in 2006 has been a bobblehead & a free ticket to Six Flags). But you get a free ticket for one game per month. The cool thing with that is this ticket is also good for $6 tickets for "friends and family", which means you can get more tickets at dirt cheap. So last night I used the voucher out of my daughter's package, and got two tickets upstairs for $6. I was by myself, so I used the empty seat next to me as blank space so I'm not so darned squashed (being fairly overweight that's more of an issue to me). It's one of the good hidden money saving tricks (another good one is to buy food out of the Rangers Captain Corral in right field - it's kid food stuff, and it's $1 all the time for hot dogs if I remember right).

I didn't intend on writing this much about costs, but darnit.. It's kept me from coming to more games. I used to go to so many, but with all these things piling up it keeps me from coming to more games. Cost is a major issue for a lot of people coming to games, no matter how much a millionaire like Hicks wants to put his head in the sand and ignore it. Want less empty seats? Cut prices. It's as simple as that. It really is.

Oh yeah - the game. Well, I got out there, and was looking forward to seeing John Koronka pitch. He's had a few not sparkling entries lately, but has pitched pretty decently still. And that kept up tonight. With the exception of the third inning when he walked three batters, Koronka had some great control, and threw a great game. His total line was 7IP, 5H, 2R, 1K, 3BB. One of those walks led to a run, adn the other run came on a solo home run. In all his pitching was great.

Francisco Cordero blew another save, his second since losing the actual closer's job. He still has speed, but people are finding ways to beat him; it's got to be some minor control issue. While I'm in no way ready to abandon him, I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing "is he finished" in the press and whatnot.

Otsuka was perfect in his appearance in the ninth for his seventh save of the season.

Joe Blanton went for Oakland. He wasn't all that bad either, going just 5IP, giving up 5H and 2ER. However, he threw a LOT of pitches, and was out after 5 having thrown 107 pitches. That put us in the Oakland bullpen, who didn't fare as well. The trio of Keisler, Gaudin, & Flores went 3IP, giving up only 3 hits, but 3ER on 3BB. In all fairness, Flores doesn't deserve to be lumped in there, he only went 0.1IP to finish up the game.

But walks were a major factor in this game - on both sides. Koronka's three walks led to one of the Oakland runs, and Oakland walked a total of 8 batters. I'm not sure at the moment how many of those 8 scored, but I think at least a couple did. You can't expect to win a game while walking that many.

Also, Ian Kinsler got drilled by the first pitch he saw early in the game - not terribly sure if it was a purpose pitch or not, but Koronka's near beaning of an Oakland batter the next inning definitely was, as he had great control tonight. :)

We're now three games up in the West, and while it's way too early to even contemplate things like playoffs (heck, it's still May), it is nice to say we have a lead in the West.

What a game!

I was watching early on while eating dinner, and when the Rangers went down 3 nothing early, I kind of sort of started not paying attention, as my wife had to go out to the store, so I was on baby watching duty. By the time I noticed it was 7-0, I was OK, I'm done, let's go do something else.

So my baby went to bed, and I checked the score, and uh-oh, it's 7-5, so I tuned in to see what happened, and bam - a grand slam by Rod Barajas, who won someone $25k in the Sonic Slam inning. The Oakland starter was pulled, and Steve Karsay came in and pitched to Ian Kinsler who was back from the DL tonight - and BAM! Second Ranger HR of the game, and it was a no doubter to left. You had the feeling that we'd come all the way back.

In the bottom of the seventh, Mark Teixeira got his first home run in ages (a solo), one to right field, just over the wall past the wedgie. Then in the bottom of the eighth, Ian Kinsler stepped up and jacked another no doubter to left, his second home run tonight in his first game back - it's as if he never left. Granted it's just one game back, but Ian was in a groove when he went down, and this just felt like the next game.

Kevin Millwood was not good at all. He gave up all 7 Oakland runs in his 5IP. Our relievers (Mahay, Bauer, Otsuka) pitched scoreless relief. None of the Oakland pitchers (Halsey, Karsay, Calero, Street) escaped without giving up some runs.

That brings us back to the Rangers power bats. In the bottom of the ninth, Ranger DH Phil Nevin, who is barely hanging onto his job according to the press stepped up and jacked a Houston Street pitch over the center field wall for a game winning walk off solo home run to win the game 8-7.

What a comeback. I admit, I had given up on the game, but it was hard not to be excited, even if I didn't pay much attention early. We were led by Rod Barajas' grand slam, and Ian Kinsler's two solo home runs. In all we had 5 home runs, and that provided the runs we needed for the win.

We're now up two games over the A"s in the West. So far, the 2006 club has that 2004 feel to it. Nice win. I'm going to the game tomorrow night; hopefully we still have that magic while I'm there. :)

UPDATE: I had a few queries about this picture - I did not take it. This was a wire photo which I thought was cool enough to put here. It was originally taken by a guy by the name of Tony Gutierrez with AP. You can now click on the photo for a larger version.

UPDATE 2: I also have two other angles from the mob scene at home plate, both taken by the same guy. I didn't inline image them as I thought the one I used was better, but if you want to check 'em out, you can click here and here.

I'm not going to be writing about the Angels series. The webserver that this site is housed on was compromised, and while no data appears to have been lost, the security breach has taken up most of my time in plugging holes.

No time to write.

For Saturday's game, I wrote about pitching and shutouts. Well, that applies two days in a row, as the Rangers were shut out by Houston pitcher Taylor Buckholz. I remember this guy from when he was a Phillie (as I follow them too), he never stuck me as quite this good.

He tossed a complete game shutout, going all 9, giving up just five hits and striking out 6 with no walks. Quite a masterful performance. Couldn't get anything going all day. The only one close was Kevin Mench who had two of the five hits, but that was all.

John Koronka took the hill for us, and wasn't really that bad, IMO. He technically threw a quality start (6IP, 3ER, 5H, 3K, 4BB). The walks were not good, too many. But he didn't really strike me as having a bad start. Problem is that when you have the kind of game that Buckholz had thrown against you, it's almost impossible to win.

Interesting that two of the games in this series were shutouts, one going to each side. Astros are up 2-1 games wise for the Silver Boot award for 2006.

Whenever there's a shutout win, you will always look to the pitching in the game. This one was no different.

Kevin Millwood went seven innings, allowing no runs on just four hits, while striking out six. Rick Bauer & Francisco Cordero finished up the last two innings allowing no runs on just one hit (Cordero). The cool thing is that all three of our pitchers allowed no walks combined. That's always good.

Andy Pettite on the other hand was a victim of the kind of game we usually have against us. Pettite gave up 12 hits in his 6 innings, and 5 of the 6 Ranger runs. Without going back and counting, and awful lot (I'd say about half) of the hits probably shouldn't have been, they were bloop hits, and ones right on the line, and things of that nature. While we only needed one run from the way our pitching went, we got a lot more than we probably "deserved".

Still, a win is a win, and I'll take it.

Aw dammit. This was looking good too. Tejeda was pretty decent if not great through the first four, and got through the fifth, although he was clearly out of gas. He only gave up one run on two hits through five. Struck out six, walked four. As I said, decent if not great. Given some more stamina, he might have gone further.

He was matched up against Roy Oswalt. You know what that means. You're expected to lose. Especially when you throw a "kid" (Tejeda) against him. But Oswalt seemed (for him anyway) pedestrian. His total line was 6.1 IP on 11 hits, 2 BB, and 3K. He gave up all thee (earned) runs the Rangers scored tonight. Could have been a lot worse as we left a ton of guys on base. The frustrating part of that is that we got twice as many hits as the 'Stros got (12 to 6), but lost the game 5-3.

Our relief pitching was an odd lot tonight. Rick Bauer couldn't hold the lead, giving up the tying run (at 2-2) in his inning of work. He was followed by Scott Feldman who looked really great during his .2 IP. Problem was he was making a running tag on a runner down the first base line, and twisted his ankle - and had to leave the game. Joaqun Benoit came in, and in the 8th gave up the 3 run double to Adam Everett that lost us the game.

Shame, as it felt like a game would would triumph over Roy Oswalt.

As much as I'd like to write about the Rangers beating the Yankees to take a series split in New York, I just don't have the time today. Way too busy at work, as my company is about to release a product. Updates might be spotty for the forseeable future due to that.

Oh yeah. We lost to the Yankees again. I decided a year or so ago I don't write about losses to the Yankees.

Shit.

Milwood strong. Mussina strong. Cordero strong. Otsuka strong. Farnsworth not.

That's the game. Milwood had a great game, going seven innings (on only 78 pitches), and at one point retired about a dozen in a row. In fact, Kevin would have likely kept going, but had to come out due to it raining in the Bronx, causing another rain delay. Cordero came out, pitched a scorless 8th, and Otsuka a scoreless ninth. Between all three pitchers, we gave up a total of six hits, a really great pitching performance, plus no walks.

Mike Mussina also went seven, giving up 6 hits and two runs, matching Milwood. However, Kyle Farnsworth came out and pitched in the rain, giving up 3 hits and two runs in his one inning of work. That gave us the game.

We're now two games up in the West, which is nice to see.

Given the way the rains washed out Friday night's game, and the forecast we were told about, I can't say I'm surprised at all about the fact that tonight's game was totally rained out hours before it even started. According to the press release, it will be made up in June when we go back there.

Going into this road trip, I didn't have a particularly great feeling. The homestand ended weakly, and my gut feeling was the team was lethargic. The dark storm clouds were all over the start of this road trip, both figuratively and literally on Friday night. I saw this road trip as a major possibility for disaster. We had that 1-12 road trip last year which effectively killed the season for a lot of people. We are in Boston, where we haven't played well at all in the last few yeras, then to New York for 4, and then on to Houston before returning home again. It didn't feel good at all.

Which is why the win last night made me feel better. Sure, it's just one, and we could lose all the rest, but I'd much rather start the road trip with a win than a loss. You don't often get games shortened by weather for a win, but that's what happened. Actually, now that I think about it, I used to see this a bunch when I lived in Philly, but down in Texas, that almost never happens, it seems.

Kameron Loe started the game, and looked pretty good, if not dominant, despite his line of 5IP and 0ER on 5 hits (4K, 1BB). I did miss bits of it due to "family stuff", but from what I saw, it was good, if not "oh my god, he's shutting out the Sox". But, you can't argue with the line, it was a good performance, even if my attention wasn't focued on it. :)

Clement on the other hand never seemed to get it going, going 5 himself, but giving up 4 runs on six hits over his five frames. Hank Blalock got a home run off CLement, but that was the only longball. Gary Matthews led the offensive charge going 2 for 4 with three RBI's, and a triple. Rod Barajas and Phil Nevin also chimed in with a double each. We actually didn't have a bunch of hits overall (7 in 6 innings), but they were efficient, combining for 6 runs. From what they were saying, it seems lke Saturday's game might get wiped out by rain, too.

Also, I don't know if you read Baseball Musings, but David over there was at the game last night, and posted his thoughts on attending the soaked Sox game here.

Vicente Padilla had a technical quality start. He went 6+ innings, gave up 3 runs on 3 hits with 3 walks and 5 K's. But he hit a wall in the seventh, that cost him.

But as I sit here and try and write about this on Friday, I have to say I don't want to - because I was really disappointed that we lost the game. We should have swept the Twins.

Sigh.

I think the picture to the right about sums up this game in several ways. I don't think I really need to explain it, do I? I mean, if you're gonna lose, lose big. Losing 15-5 is pretty big, although it didn't even feel as close as 10 runs for most of the game. Felt like 20-0, almost instantly. And yes, I took the easy way out and watched something else. Was watching E3 coverage, as my industry's trade show is going on right now in Los Angeles.

Justin Morneau hit two home runs and drove in 6 RBI's. Millwood just raised his ERA about 1.6 to 5.1 by allowing 9ER on 9 hits in 1.1IP. That can't be good for the ol' ERA. :) Thing is, none of the 4 relief pitchers we threw out there (Bauer, Feldman, Alfonseca, & Wilson) had clean slates. All gave up runs (although Wilson's was unearned).

We stunk hard. However, our home streak of games without any home runs is over - Mench & Blalock had home runs.

I've said this before - if we're gonna lose THIS bad, it might as well be something REALLY interesting and we lose 27-3 or something like that. :)

While we won this game, I felt bad about it. The reason was that I was completely disgusted with the Yankees series. We couldn't do a thing against the Yankees. Then we beat the Twins, who are floundering. It just confirmed what happened in the Yankees series to me. Now if this game had been against the Red Sox, or the White Sox, or even the A's, I would have felt better. But the Twins are 13-19 and should have lost. No accomplishment there. :(

I didn't get to see the game, as I had forgotten it started at 6PM. My TiVo at home caught it, but I turned on for the pregame show on my way home from work, and got the game, so I listened. No score while I was driving home, but when I got home, ate dinner and all that, I discovered that my TiVo had picked up the ESPN feed of the game, and not the local coverage, so I didn't watch anything, which at this point was in the 7th inning. I ended up doing family stuff, so I barely saw any of this one. 6PM ESPN really mess with me. :)

Hank Blalock had an odd line. He went 4 for 4, but had no runs scored, and just one RBI. Mike Young was 2-3. Mark Teixeira was 2-3 with two runs scored, and Gary Matthews was also 2-3. Phil Nevin led with 2 RBI, and no one else (Tex, Blalock, Mench) had more than one - the 6th run not coming on an RBI.

John Koronka (who I've had on 7 of my 8 fantasy teams for about a month now) contiunues to be solid for us. He went 6.1IP, giving up 7 hits and 2 walks for 3ER. Not as sharp as he's been in the past, but still "technically" a quality start, and certainly well enough for the win. Benoit followed up with 1.2IP of shutout ball, and Otsuka got the save, after giving up a run.

But a win is a win, even if it doesn't feel like the greatest win, because it was against the struggling Twins.

No comment.

You know, for awhile there the game was 8-1. We were losing, and it was obvious we were losing. I stopped watching, because quite frankly, I'm sick of watching the Yankees win. Yankees lose, I'll watch anyday. Decided to spend some time talking to my wife.

After a time, I peeked back in to see what was going on, and saw we had gotten back in it 8-7 in the bottom of the 8th, so I backed up the Tivo a bit, and watched all that. I got all excited, thinking we'd come back and win.

I almost wished we had lost 8-1, that would have been easier to take.

The Baltimore Orioles could only muster four hits against Ranger ace, Kevin Milwood. Kevin pitched a complete game, the first such game for a Ranger pitcher this season, only a day after John Koronka set that record with 8.1IP. It's the kind of pitching performance I'm sure everyone envisioned when he signed with us. The kind of thing that Chan Ho never really did in his time here.

Milwood did give up a home run to Jay Gibbons, the second such hit for Jay in two games. Kevin also walked two and struck out one. The Orioles didn't get much, but they did bunch the couple they got together aside from the home run, as it did produce some small offense.

Our offence bombed Bruce Chen, a player whom I've never much cared for since he was in Philly. Chen was blitzed for 11 hits and 8 runs (7ER) over 4 innings pitched. The remaining four innings were handled by two guys out of the Baltimore pen who didn't give up any more, so this was all on Chen (11 of the 14 hits were Chen's, too).

This was our sixth win in a row, and a really nice one to have, although my gut tells me we might need it against the Yankees, too bad Kevin won't face them this weekend.

You think I'd learn not to be messing with my laptop online when I am watching a time shifted Rangers game on my TiVo. But do I learn from that? Nope. I'm in the fifth or sixth inning, and there pops up my Gmail notifier with an email from Jamey Newberg titled "Newberg Report Walkoff Flash". Great, there goes that game for me. I don't blame Jamey, I blame myself for being dumb and not protecting myself against finding out ahead of time.

Having said that, what I saw was pretty darn good. John Koronka has turned out to be a major steal, if he ends up continuing to pitch the way he has so far. 8.1 Innings pitched, only 6 hits, and no walks with 4 strikeouts. In fact, the only run he gave up was a solo home run to Jay Gibbons in the fourth inning. Koronka was brilliant. The four pitchers behind him also deserve credit for combining on 3.2IP of shutout relief. A masterful pitching performance by "your Texas Rangers". Gotta love that.

On the flip side, Baltimore's pitching was almost as good. Daniel Cabrera went 6 innings, giving up just one run himself on a sacrifice fly. Their pen threw five relievers, and the only mistake was by John Halama at the end. He gave up a line drive home run by Mark DeRosa in the bottom of the 12th inning to win it in walkoff fashion for the Rangers. Was a thrilling win on a definite pitcher's duel night.

Just wished I hadn't ruined it for myself by finding out the score ahead of time. :(

Robinson Tejeda made his Rangers debut tonight, and pitched fairly decently, except he allowed more walks than innings pitched, which is NEVER good. He did dance along on a tightrope tonight, giving up just two runs in his 5 innings pitched (on said walks plus three hits). I remember him when the Rangers were in Philly last year for interleague, he annihilated us. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but he did seem good. I know a lot of people are waiting for him to dominate, as he cost us David Dellucci in a trade. I think he'll be fine, probably not an uber stud pitcher, but good indeed. Course, I'm just a fan, so what the hell do I know?

Tejeda was backed up by six relief pitchers over a span of 4 innings (Mahay, Benoit, Wilson, Alfonseca, Cordero, & Otsuka). Cordero in a setup role, and Otsuka, who got his third save of the season.

Offensively, Mark DeRosa continues to flourish since coming back from the "fake DL" :) He was 3 for 4 with a home run and a double. He's definitely swinging a hot bat at the moment, and I wonder if it will impact Ian Kinsler's return which should be soon as well. Brad Wilkerson also had a good night going 2 for 2 with a home run, three runs scored, and two walks. He's raised his batting average to .242 after a horrific start to the season.

We "swept" the Rays in this series, but does it really count as a sweep in a two game series? Yeah, I know by the definition of a sweep it does, but two game series never feel like "series sweeps" to me. Not a lot of Rays fans around to see it, as their attendance was 7,147. Yikes.

Nice to come back home off a 4-1 road trip.

After his last start, and ending up the first month of the season without a single win, I dropped Kameron Loe from several fantasy teams I had him on. That's usually a sign that something good will happen to him, and it did.

Kameron Loe sparkled tonight in St. Petersburg against the Rays. Kam went seven innings, giving up no runs on four hits, striking out 3, and walking none. He looked great, the game moved quickly, it was probably his best performance of the season. Following him up were Francisco Cordero (8th) & Akinori Otsuka (9th). Both relief pitchers tossed a perfect inning to keep the shutout in place.

Seth McClung, who gave up about 85 runs the last time he was on the mound against Texas, was just as a good as Loe. In fact, McClung went 7, gave up just five hits, and three strikeouts. However, McClung had two walks, and gave up two runs. One was the first run of the game on a home run to Rod Barajas in the fith. Even after that, he still seemed pretty good. We didn't score again until the eighth when McClung came out, put someone on, and then Lugo allowed the inherited runner, and one of his own to score.

The total pitching line:

Texas Pitchers: 9IP, 4H, 0R, 5K, 0BB, 0HR
Tampa Pitchers: 9IP, 6H, 3ER, 3K, 4BB, 1HR

Was definitely a pitcher's duel. Definitely an enjoyable game. We'll end today in first place, too. :)

No time to write an update, but we did win another road series. And we are in first place after Sunday's action. :)

No time to write an update.

Josh Lewin kept calling this game a game of inches, and from what I saw, it was.

In the first inning, Mark Teixeira was called out at the plate on a really close call that looked safe.
In the ninth inning, Mark Teixeira almost had a home run to tie the game, missing clearning by inches
In the ninth inning, there was a wild pitch with Tex on third that didn't get away quite far enough.
In the ninth inning, there was a fly to right that just missed being far enough to score Tex by inches.
In the ninth inning, Kevin Mench checked his swing, and it was a close call - by inches.
And then there was that catch by Grady Sizemore that if the ball was just a couple of inches further, we would have scored at least one more run.

We lost the game, and while it never felt in our control, it did "feel" like it was something we'd pull out. John Koronka started, and went 5.2IP, giving up 6 hits, and four walks. Amazingly with all that, only four runs. Could have been a lot worse there. Rick Bauer, who was tagged for the loss, gave up two unearned runs in his 0.2 IP. Ron Mahay followed, and din't give up anything. Francisco Cordero finished up, not in the ninth, but in the 8th, in his new role as a setup man. However, he gave up a run on two hits. Additionally, combined Rangers pitching gave up seven walks. Far too many.

On the other side, Cleveland starter Jason Johnson went 6 innings, and gave up twelve hits (!) and walked two, giving up just four. In fact, the overall line was odd. The Rangers had 15 hits and the Tribe had just 8, but we lost the game 7-6.

Kevin Mench extended his home run streak to seven. He's now the only righthander in baseball history to hit home runs in seven straight games. I would love for him to get home runs on Sat & Sunday and set a new major league record. I'm sure most Rangers fans would. :)

I was really feeling high on this game. I did something I never do - I did an update during the game. Kevin Mench had another grand slam, giving him a home run in six straight games, setting a Ranger record.

However, we went into the ninth with the lead, 4-3, and Buck Showalter decided to let Cordero get back on the horse after yesterday's disappointing loss. Then Cordero gave up another home run, to let the game get tied. We couldn't pull off any more runs, yet gave up two more in the 10th, and we lost the game 6-4.

As high as I was over Mench's record setting grand slam, the loss at the back end was extremely disheartening. It reminds me of when we were in Cincinnatti a couple of years ago and Coco blew a few saves, a few to keep Rogers from winning 20, if I remember right. So shortly after the game, it was announced that Cordero was being "relieved" of his closer duties for the time being, and Otsuka would get that job. It's probably not the end of the world, but when you change your closer, it's never really a good thing.

Well, we won in the bottom of the ninth. That was exciting and all, but it doens't feel as good to me because Coco Cordero blew another lead in the ninth. It's odd on my fantasy teams where I have him, as I'm not getting saves, but I'm getting stupid high ERA's and wins from him. Not the way I wanted my closer to behave.

We seemed to have this game pretty well in hand all along. We got out early on an uncharacteristically (sp?) wild Barry Zito (75 pitches through first three innings). Zito gave up 6 hits and 5 runs overall in his 5 innings pitched. He also walked 4 and struck out five, a bunch of numbers that just don't say Zito. Even his trademark curveball wasn't as good as it was - one of them Hank Blalock nailed off the right field foul pole for a home run.

Speaking of home runs, Kevin Mench tied the Ranger record with five straight games with a home run. The second was right after Blalock's home run. Phil Nevin had a shot later in the game, too. It was all feeling good, as Vicente Padilla was going well, allowing just one run through five. He did give up a couple in the sixth, but still had good numbers, going 5.2IP, allowing 3 runs (only 2 earned). He did walk four which isn't good. But we blew getting him the win, which he probably deserved.

Cordero stunk up the joint again, and when he came off the field after blowing the lead, he got booed, which is a new experience for him, I'd imagine. The TV coverage showed Akinori Otsuka a bit in the pen when Cordero was knee deep in it. I wonder how long it would take before that switch was made?

Well, what was good? Kevin Milwood pitched shutout ball.

Well, what was bad? Kevin Millwood only pitched five innings. The Stars also lost a game late tonight. :(

Said it before, will say it again. You can't walk 7 batters in a game and expect to win. Although, as I recall, most of the guys who walked didn't score. Millwood walked 6 batters in five innings, and none of them scored. The other one was by CJ Wilson, who did give up all three runs, although I can't recall at the moment if his walk scored. Probably did.

Take out Wilson's inning, and we did not all that bad. But we didn't get enough offense, even though Kevin Mench tried, going 3-4 with a home run, and getting both our RBI's. A frustrating game. Sigh.

I'm going to have to take a pass on commentiung on the Devil Rays series. I was going to do all three of them in one update on Monday, but I got stupid busy at work again, and this is about all I can say about it.

Well, this game was cruising along nicely. Vicente Padilla and Joel Piniero were pitching a scoreless shutout through five innings. Things were nice. The Rangers then got a few runs in the sixth. Gary Matthews broke the ice with a home run to right field. We then loaded the bases, and Kevin Mench just missed a grand slam (and $25k for someone on the Sonic contest) by a few feet. Still, he got his first two RBI's of the season on a double the scraped the top of the wall in the left field wall. It stayed that way, and Padilla was still in the game in the bottom of the seventh. He gave up a solo home run in the seventh, and game out having pitched an excellent game. Seven innings, only thee hits, and one earned run (the HR). He did walk three, but struck out seven.

Joaquin Benoit came on, and gave up two runs after a play that initially looked like a bad call, but was probably right (the ball that Adrian Brown in right trapped). Our pen couldn't hold it again, and we went into the ninth 3-3. Eddie Guardardo came on, and he's someone we always seem to have good success against. Eddie threw 38 pitches in the top of the ninth - a lot of stuff happened, and we did get one run off of him in the ninth, and it was on a walked in run.

In the bottom of the ninth Cordero came on after Tom Grieve was saying that he wasn't supposed to pitch at all, but Buck Showalter showed some support for his closer and sending him back out there after getting slammed last night. The game ended on a nice defensive play by Hank Blalock and a nice pick by Mark Teixeira. But for me the play here was the pitching by Padilla. He was quite the pitcher we've needed the last few years tonight, and it's a shame he got a no decision.

We come back home to Arlington with a winning road record. That's a nice thing to have.

You know, I'm so mad at how this ended, I don't feel like writing about it, despite the fact that I do have time to write about this one.

Stupid busy at work today, no time to write anything.

This was definitely two games in one. The first game seemed to run from the start till the seventh inning. It was a great pitchers duel. Kameron Loe went 7 innings for the Rangers, giving up one unearned run on 5 hits. Dan Haren went 8 plus innings, giving up 1 run on four hits. A good pitcher's duel.

Then it got into the bullpen. Otsuka did not do well, giving up a couple of runs in .2 IP. However, Houston Street was terrible, giving up FOUR runs in his .2 IP in relief. THat was the difference. We did have a couple of home runs in the game late for the win. One was a two run shot by Tex, which wasn't a surprise.

However, the other one was far more comical, envoking memories of Jose Canseco's ball off the head home run. Milton Bradley had a ball hit by D'Angelo Jimenez in his glove, and then "pushed" it over the fence for a home run. If he hadn't have touched that ball, no home run, but the only reason Jimenez got his first Ranger home run was thanks to Mr Bradley. It was pretty comical to watch. :)

Not much else to say about this one, as today was my daughter's first birthday, and I watched this game in about 20 minutes in high speed on the TiVo. :)

Our first series win of the season. That's good.

This game can be summed up in just a few words. Padilla. Home Run.

While obviously more went on in this game, it will hinge on the fact that Padilla gave up three consecutive home runs to the A's in the 6th. In all, Padilla went 5+ innings, gave up 8 hits (four of which were home runs) while walking one and striking out four. Obviously not his best start with us. Jack Benoit and CJ Wilson combined to pitch the other three innings, and didn't give up any more. Sure, we could have scored more runs in the final three innings, and didn't. But it just felt like the game was over in the sixth inning.

On the other side of things, the A's pretty much kept us in check. In the entire game, we had just five hits total. One of them was a three run home run by Phil Nevin. We never got much sustained offense in this game.

As I said before, home run. Padilla. Game over.

I won't have much time to write about this one. The reason is I had to get up at 3:30AM for Easter Church responsibilities on Friday morning, so by the time this game rolled around, I was dead to the world tired. I fell asleep during the game, and I didn't see the back end of it util about 8:20AM on Saturday morning. Now I'm off to the aiport to pick up my mother in law who will be in for my daughter's first birthday tomorrow.

Zito helped more than the Rangers helped themselves, as he was wild, and definitely not "Zito". Still, I'll take the win just fine. :)

I'll have more about this in the morning. The game just ended, and I'm fairly tired. I will post my raw notes I took while the game was going though. Will probably have somethimg more coherent in the morning. :)

Welcome back Matthews. 3 run 2 out 2 strike triple in the fourth. Batted around in the fourth. Tex HR too

Fifth: Two singles, a walk, a couple of RBI's chased Escobar after giving up 8 runs in 4.1IP

Sixth: Nix got an RBI double, first ebh of season.

3 hits 3 runs 2 RBI with a home run for Gerald Laird

Nix hit by pitch

Mike Young got his 900th career hit

Esteban Yan wild pitch scoring the 11th run

Koronka looked good. Started the game by striking out the side. Koronka made a great pickup on the mound on the botom of the 6th, behind his back

Guerrero: 39 games

I had a really nice writeup in my mind. Bauer was far FAR better than I was expecting him to be. We got some power from Hank Blalock, who had two home runs. We had double digit hits, we had some timely stuff. We had some really great defense - that DP by Brown in right was spectacular.

I did like the move Showalter made by taking Wilkerson out of the #1 slot. I liked moving Kinsler up to 6th (Wilkerson 7th).

But we had ass for pitching in the bottom of the ninth, and we blew it completely both from the pitching side, and the defense dropped the ball allowing the winning run to score. Given the way momentum was going, it probably would have scored anyway. But the way we lost was highly annoying. Just irritated me. 2-7. I'm not giving up by far - it has to be a couple of months for me to do that, but wow is this disappointing.

Ugh. This wasn't pretty at all. Only five hits. Two errors. More strikeouts, now 2-6. Only high point was when we were up 2-0 on Phil Nevin's home run in the first inning. After that, ugh...

Hank Blalock did have a double in the 9th, but it didn't matter for anything. Kinsler batted .500 for the night and walked, so his on base percentage went up further. :) Loe wasn't sharp at all, tossing 26 pitches in the first inning, and then giving up all 5 Angel runs over 5 innings. Feldman & Shouse pitched 3 scoreless innings in relief, but it didn't matter, since we couldn't do anything against Lackey, Shields, & Rodriguez.

I'm never one to push the panic button too early, but it doesn't feel good at all. There's plenty of time, PLENTY of time, but ugh. Can we bat Ian Kinsler nine times in a row, and pitch only Vicente Padilla?

I've been going to baseball games for a long time. As far back as I can remember, which would be somewhere in the early 1970's. Back when Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium was a shiny new place, not the butt of everyone's jokes. Anyway, also for a long time I've had a tradition I've done every year. It's the "Birthday Game". This is something where I always go to a home game on my birthday. Back when I didn't go to 20-30 games a year, this was much more siginficant, it felt like a treat. I still have gone to the game every year since then. Now if the team (the Phillies for a long time, now the Rangers) are not home on my actual birthday, I take the next closest calendar game. That's what I was doing today. I was starting the next generation of this tradition. You see, it was given to me by my mother, and now that I have a daughter I'm doing it with her. My kid's first birthday is next Sunday, so we chose today as her first "birthday game". It was pretty cool, we bought her a present in the gift shop. I enjoyed that. Hopefully when she's old enough to comprehend the depth of the tradition she'll still be into baseball and want to go. :)

When the game started it felt quickly like it was going to be like the others that have come before it because both the first and second innings weren't smooth. The Tigers had plenty of action in the first two, and I felt we were lucky that we only gave up two runs. Pidente wasn't as sharp as he was on the second day of the season. He didn't stink up the joint like Dickey did, but it was passable enough. In all, Pidente went six innings, giving up 3ER with 3K, and 3BB to get his second win of the season, which was also the Rangers' second win of the season. Good winning percentage for Vicente so far. :) Our bullpen was only one hit away from perfect. Between Alfonseca, Otsuka, & Coco, there was just one hit and no walks over three combined innings. That's the way that it's supposed to work.

On the other side, former Ranger Kenny Rogers didn't fare as well. He looked like Kenny, he wasn't dominating at all, that's not his style (to me). But he pitched a total of 5.1 innings, and gave up a lot of hits (twelve), and all five Ranger runs. We had four doubles, and eight singles against Rogers. No home runs, but some hits at the right time, including the most opportune one, a double to the top of the wall in front of the Rangers' bullpen by Brad Wilkerson. Brad had struck out three times in the game at that point (he did strike out four times anyway), and was down 0-2. He jacked the last pitch Rogers threw in the game almost out of the park scoring two and giving Pidente the win. Pidente was probably out of the game at this point, so the runs were very well timed. Ian Kinsler continues his torrid start to the season, going 2-4. In fact, the bottom of the lineup (Laird & Kinsler) scored four of the five runs.

There were a total of four ex Rangers on the field Sunday - Rogers & Pudge being the most notable. The others were Craig Monroe & Marcus Thames. But something Pudge did had the potential to be a problem. Late in the game, Pudge hit a screaming liner at Mike Young for the final out of the inning. It happened so fast that Pudge didn't even get out of the batters box, and when that happened he tossed his bat back in the general area of the on deck circle. It ended up hitting the feet of the next Tiger waiting to bat. If that had missed (Pudge wasn't watching), I wonder how much the press would get on him if said bat throw had hit a cameraman? I'm sure someone would have played that up. This wasn't shown on TV, I watched my recording on TiVo when I got home.

To tie this up, the reason I've been calling Vicente Padilla "Pidente" is because of a connection to back home. Long time HOF broadcaster Harry Kalas means baseball to me. Kallas is to the Phillies what Eric Nadel is for the Rangers, only Kalas has been at it longer (35 years now I think). Anyway, a few years back, Harry called him "Vicente Pidente" and to this day my brother and I find that pretty amusing.

For the last few years, I've always said that I hate it when the Rangers go up against rookies, or guys who have only pitched a couple of games in the majors. You're supposed to score 8 runs in the first inning against guys like that, but we always seem to get shut down. Tonight was one of the latter.

The Tigers tossed Justin Verlander against us. Wow, did he look electric. As good as Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett looked against us a few days ago, Verlander looked better. He only allowed two hits over 7 innings while striking out 7 and walking two. Brad Wilkerson himself struck out three times this game. The only two hits we got at all were singles by Nevin & Blalock (who comitted his second error of the season already). The Tigers threw two relievers for the last two innings, but the game was over by then.

The reason it was over was that Kevin Milwood pitched more like the other bit name Scott Boras pitching client we have a recent history with and not the 2005 AL ERA leader. Milwood gave up four in the first frame on his way to giving up 5 total (4ER) runs on 8 hits over his six innings pitched. Although most of the damage was done in the first inning. Take that out, and he wasn't too bad, but you can't forget about the first, it happened. And it was enough. Hell, the first run was enough the way Verlander pitched.

Still, despite now being 1-5, I'm nowhere near ready to panic. I'm sure we'll see an article by someone saying that it's because Jaramillo isn't here that we're not hitting. There will be Internet forums where people will give up on the season completely, and radio call ins on Monday saying the season is over and start talking about how the Cowboys will go 16-0 because of Terrell Owens. Don't panic. Wise words from the late Douglas Adams.

The Rangers drop to 1-4 after tonight's loss to the Tigers. It's way WAY too early to panic, but it is disappointing. I was expecting to be 3-2 at this point.

This one started out the way most of our games went. We were in it early, and just a few things here and thre seemed to let the game slip away. John Koronka started, and looked decent early. Where have I heard that before - even just in this season so far? Despite his line (5IP, 6H, 4ER), he didn't seem all that bad for me. I won't be upset to see him get another start. He looked better than his line. Plus he's a lefty, which itself is something that will probably earn him another start at least.

Rick Bauer, who was called up after RA Dickey was sent out after last night's debacle followed Koronka. Bauer went three innings, giving up just one run on 4 hits. That wasn't bad at all. I know he was called up to provide bullpen relief, as Koronka wasn't expected to pitch very long, but he looked decent out there.

Mike Maroth, who usually gets bombed when he pitches against the Rangers turned it around tonight. He did have a lot of hits (8) for the innings pitched he had (5.1), but he only allowed one run.

We couldn't get much of anywhere against the Tigers pitching tonight. We did have eleven hits overall, but only managed two runs against the Tigers. Young, Tex, & Nevin both had two apiece, and the rest were scattered amongst the lineup. Mike Young did get a home run - but everything else was a single. Unless you get a boatload of singles (way more than 11), you don't always score a bunch of runs.

Ian Kinsler continued to impress, going 2 for 4, and raising his batting average to .462 for the season. In fact, after tonight's action, here's a comparison of stats. I'm sure in the long run this won't remain the case, but for a purely homer reason it's amusing to compare:

Runs Scored: Kinsler 2, Soriano 1
Hits: Kinsler 6, Soriano 4
Doubles: Kinsler 1, Soriano 0
Home Runs: Kinsler 1, Soriano 0
RBI: Kinsler 1, Soriano 0
Total Bases: Kinsler 10, Soriano 4
Walks: Kinsler 1, Soriano 0
Strikeouts: Kinsler 0, Soriano 4
Stolen Bases: Soriano 1, Kinsler 0
OBP: Kinsler .533, Soriano .375
Slugging: Kinsler .769, Soriano .286
Batting Average: Kinsler .462, Soriano .286
Salary: Kinsler $327,000, Soriano $10 Million

You've gotta love all that. :)

This game's tone was set almost immediately. On the second pitch of the game, Brandon Inge hit a home run over the left field wall. Then Magglio Ordonez. Then Chris Shelton. Then Shelton again. Then Craig Monroe. Then Marcus Thames. And shortly after that, R.A. Dickey was pulled out of the game. Dickey tied a major league record for most home runs allowed by a single pitcher in a game. Later on in the game, Brian Shouse allowed one too, so we gave up 7 home runs to the Tigers. That's a lot of flyballs. Dickey faced 18 batters, and six of them got home runs. Not good at all.

Dickey's knuckleball looked nothing like the one that Wakefield threw against us. His allowed a lot of runs too, but his at least moved like a knuckleball. Dickey's ball tonight looked more like a slow hanging slider. From the looks of it on TV, it seemed like I could hit. It didn't look good at all. The only possible saving grace (and probably the only thing that allowed Dickey to be in there long enough to give up 6 of them) is that 5 of the 6 were solo home runs (the 6th was a 2 run job). If there were runners, I'm sure he would have been pulled sooner. The guys on Baseball Tonight said tonight that "R.A." stood for "Runs allowed".

On the positive side, Ian Kinsler had a great night, going 3 for 3 (and a walk) with his first career home run, plus he deked RF Magglio Ordonez on the basepaths and got a double out of a ball that by rights should have been a single. He looked quite good tonight offensively. He did bobble a couple of balls, and also comitted the first error by the Rangers. But he did look good out there, despite the error. Mark Teixeira also went 3 for 4.

Mike Young (who had another error in the same inning as Kinsler) went 3 for 5 with a 3 RBI double in the bottom of the ninth. Mark Teixeira was also 3 for 5 with one RBI. The only other two hits by Texas were Phil Nevin & Adrian Brown. We had a couple of guys with a lot of hits, and not many scattered through the rest of the lineup.

Fabio Castro made his major league debut tonight in relief of R.A. Dickey. Castro went 3.2 IP and gave up 2 runs (only 1 earned). His line wasn't great, but he did pretty well in his major league debut. No obscene lines (like 6HR allowed).

Yeah, we lost this game from the beginning, but it wasn't near as annoying to me as the 2-1 loss last night.

Wow. That was one seriously good, but seriously frustrating game. A lot was written about Josh Beckett's American League debut at home in Texas. A lot was written about how Beckett would dominate this game. And he did. He's a good pitcher, I expect that. What I don't think most people were expecting is that Kameron Loe stood toe to toe with him and was beating Beckett for most of the game. The Rangers went up 1-0 in the first inning and it stood that way until the seventh.

Loe was actually better than Beckett was, but the game's difference was a home run Loe gave up in the seventh inning to Trot Nixon. That was the game. It was a shame, as Loe was brilliant. My heart sank on that, because I felt he deserved better than that. We couldn't come back against the Sox. We came close against Mike Timlin, but Mark Teixeira was thrown out at the plate on a hit that I didn't think we should have tried to score on. Oddly enough Boston didn't bring in their closer (Foulke) to close out the game. They brought in Jonathan Papelbon. That raised a few eyes, I'm sure.

It was amusing to see Manny Ramirez stike out on some more high cheese for the second night in a row.

I hate writing about games that we should have won but lost due to one small thing. Sigh.

Game two went a lot better than game one. As I've said a million times before when facing a knuckleball pitcher, you either are shut down and get nothing, or you tee off and score 50 runs. There doesn't appear to be any middle ground. Tonight we got the "tee off" version. We faced Tim Wakefield, whom we always seem to have decent success against. And we got off quickly, going up 4-0 after the first four batters of the game with no one out. That pretty much set the tone for this game. All the offense that wasn't there against Schilling was against Wakefield.

On the flip side, Vicente Padilla delivered what Millwood didn't in the first game - a dominating pitching performance. He had great movement on all his pitches, a dominating looking curveball, and he threw some really nice smoke when he needed it. He struck out Manny Ramirez twice. In fact, Ramirez struck out three times (the other by Otsuka). He was definitely kept in check. Padilla looked really great, and I felt he could have come out for another inninmg, but I guess you don't want to stretch 'em out too far this early in the season.

Offensively, we were led by Phil Nevin, who had a total of 5 RBI for the night on two hits. We had 13 hits in all, spread out pretty nicely. The only starter without any hits was Laynce Nix, who has been bashing the ball the first two games, but hasn't anything to show for it yet. Oh, and Kinsler didn't have any hits either, but that's not a problem. Kevin Mench had two doubles, Mike Young got one for his first hit of the season, and of course being the Rangers we had three home runs (Nevin, Barajas, & Wilkerson).

Overall a much more enjoyable game for Rangers fans than opening day was. Tomorrow we face Josh Beckett, who will be pitching at home (he's from Texas), so he'll probably be way up for that game.

Opening Day. What's more fun than opening day? It's a day that every baseball fan loves, a day for optimism, and all those other stereotypes you hear around now. But we had a beautiful day of weather, I was there at the game with my wife and baby, and it was wonderful. So was Curt Schilling. That's the baseball story of this game. Curt Schilling. He dominated the Rangers, going 7 innings, giving up just two runs on 5 hits. The two runs were a line shot home run by Blalock into the wedge in the right hand corner.

A couple of highlights for me were watching Ian Kinsler make his major league debut, and getting a single off of Schilling. Schilling had a classy thing to say about it later when asked about giving up a knock to a rookie. Schiling said (something like) "He's a major leaguer, he deserves to be there". Nice statement by him. Kevin Milwood looked great in the first three innings. Then he seemed to run out of gas a bit too early, which is a surprise there. But again, Schilling locked us down pretty good.

It is definitely a bit more work when you have a one year old baby with you at the game. Credit to my wife who had to deal with most of it, as Samantha wanted mommy to hold her most of the time. Samantha normally would have napped for about two hours during the time we were there, so it made for a fidgety baby. But it all went well.

Parking was major ass, because I had to park all the way in the back of the parking lot out by Rt 30 and behind the Seimens building. I left about 2 hours and 45 minutes early, and I still couldn't get to my usual parking spots. It was insane, I hate parking out that far. Next year we leave even earlier for opening day. Sigh.

There were some new ballpark things which I didn't get a whole lot of time to check out. There is a new concert type area set up on the third base side on the hill next to Mark Holtz lake. I didn't get much time to check it out, but it could be interesting. There was a new picnic area outside the old gates on the first base side. Both were constructed to have the same general astehtic (sp?) feel as the rest of the park around it, so it doesn't stick out like a bright orange something going "I'm new!". Neither I got much time to check out as we were running rather late due to the parking situation. But they definitely could be useful. Inside the park is where they should focus their attentions - new scoreboards, fix broken seats, missing cupholders, etc. The place is definitely NOT a dump, but there are certain things (fix the sound system) which would help overall in the experience.

Oh, and beer is $6 now. Sigh.

Baseball is back. Life is good.

Well, it's almost 2AM, and I had intended on writing a bunch about my first trip to the Ballpark tonight. However, there was so much roster movement to take care of I don't know how well I'll be able to write. I'll save my writing about what's changed at the ballpark for Opening Day, which I almost never write about the actual game in my report. I will say this. I'm curious how they got an actual Lexus car up into the 200 level. If you come up the escalator on the third base side of the park, you'll see what I mean.

The way this game started out, it felt like we were going to have to invoke the World Baseball Classic's mercy rule. We were up 3-0 after three batters, and after a few more, we had three home runs in the first inning to go up 5-0. Brad Wilkerson added a solo home run in the second (his second of the game) to put us up 6-0, and life was good. However, R.A. Dickey then gave up a grand slam to Miguel Cabrera in the third, and we were back to a ballgame. However, that's where the scoring stopped. The final score was reached in the top of the third.

Actually, Dickey wasn't all that bad except for the slam. He struck out the side in the first inning, and looked as dominating as a knuckleballer can look - can a knuckleball pitcher be "dominating" anyway? The rest of the game was filled with a bunch of players that we'll likely never see again. I did manage to keep up with all the changes on my Palm scoring program, which was unusual, I usually fall behind when scoring a spring training game in person, since I can't pause it to catch up like I can at home. :)

It was nice to see a game again at the park. That's it, game on. Bring on Monday afternoon!

The Rangers are home. We've left spring training behind (well, in Arizona, anyway) for another year. This penultimate game of spring training went the way that a lot of Rangers games go. All of our offense was on the longball. Brad Wilkerson, Mark Teixiera, & David Dellucci all had homeruns. That was all of our offense for the game.

Phil Nevin and Hank Blalock both went 2 for 3, but didn't have any RBI's. We had a total of 8 hits in the game - a fairly well pitched game from Florida overall, although starter Brian Moeheler didn't have a great line (5IP, 4ER, 8H).

Kameron Loe went only four, but did pitch well, allowing only a single solo home run for all of Florida's offense. Fabio Castro, Erasmo Ramirez, Joaquin Benoit, Antonio Alfonseca, & Francisco Cordero all pitched in this game, and all combined for 5 innings of shutoutball on just three hits.

The game was on the radio, but I didn't get a chance to listen to most of it, as I was doing daddy duties, and then ended up helping out my wife by dealing with dirty dishes, and washing baby bottles. With the water running, it was hard to hear the radio unless I blasted it, and I didn't want to wake up my daughter. :)

The final game of spring training is at home in Arlington on Saturday evening. I'll be there

Well, Thursday was the last day in Arizona. The Rangers broke camp today. We leave Arizona with a 10-16-1 record and we skip town on a four game losing streak. Only the White Sox (8-19) did worse in Cactus League play. Not terribly worried. It's the time of year when you hear "they don't count" a lot, and then people like me say "but you still want a winning record". I think I said this same thing last year, too. :)

The biggest disappointments out of camp for me have to be the Eaton injury and the lack of any of the candidates to take a real solid hold of the #5 spot. Dickey got it, but it seems to be based on one extremely good outing, I can't recall any of his others being that stellar. Due to the Eaton injury, Juam Dominguez gets called back to be the #5, now that everyone else is bumped up one game. My gut tells me he won't grab a hold of this opportunity, either.

Oh yeah, this game. Padilla started, and went 6, giving up four runs. Not great at all, but not horrendous, either. Two home runs I believe accounted for all the runs, so overall he pitched "fair", only one walk. Cordero's appearance was a bit more disturbing, giving up two runs in his one inning on three hits.

Offensively, Mark Teixeira's home run was the big deal for us, givng us three of our four runs. Kevin Mench now has an eight game hitting streak, and he looks like our hottest player coming out of the gate.

Friday night we have an exhibition game in Frisco, then one in Arlington on Saturday that I'll be at. Still have some roster decisions to make, I wonder when the big flood will come down.

No time to write at the moment. Bummer about Eaton. :(

Juan Dominguez has probably pitched himself out of the starting rotation with his performance today. He went 4 innings, gave up four earned runs on 5 hits with three walks. Not the stuff a guy looking to earn a spot needs to put up. If you've been following the Rangers recently, you'll know that Dominguez is one of those "lots of talent, can't put it together for long" type of guys. The team from what I can gather was hoping he'd step up and win a job. Doesn't look like it will happen, he continues to fail to grab a hold of the opportunities in front of him.

Scott Feldman, who is a dark horse to make the club, but did well in his 05 appearances, threw a shutout frame. R.A. Dickey, who is likely to be the #5 guy went 2IP, and gave up a couple of runs. Not lights out either, but he's been way more consistant than Dominguez has been. Antonio Alfonseca also gave up a run in his inning, but I don't think he's a serious candidate to make the club, anyway.

Read a story tonight where the Rangers lead all spring training clubs in home runs. What a shock that is. That's all we do, really. :) We had two more in this game, one by Mark DeRosa, and another by Phil Nevin. In fact, we only had 6 hits in the whole game, and outside of the home runs, Adam Hyzdu had two of the remaining four hits. Not a lot there.

We're getting closer, I'd expect to see some big moves made in the next day or so, as we break camp on Thursday, I believe.

Well, it was a big Rangers TV night. There was a 2006 Season preview show, the regular half hour pregame show, and then the game was on TV. A good night for Rangers on the TV.

However, Edinson Volquez stunk up the joint in the first inning. He gave up a six spot there, and while that's never good, he wasn't really hit around hard. A few bloopers, a call on the field that didn't go our way. I'm not trying to absolve hium, but it's not like he was murdered either.

However, in the bottom of the first, Gil Meche walked the bases full, and had Laynce Nix down looking silly with some curveballs. He then inexplicably grooved Nix a fastball down the middle, and Nix wailed it for a grand slam, to make it 6-4 in the first inning. The game went on like that for awhile, back and forth (with more home runs by Dellucci, Mench, and another one from Nix) until the 8th when it was tied up 9-9. We then gave up a run in the 9th and couldn't get a run across in the bottom of the ninth.

Was nice seeing all this offense - the key word being seeing - I liked seeing the Rangers on TV again. This is the last game I'll see on TV though until Tuesday the 4th of April, as I'll be at the Sat Apr 1 and Mon Apr 3 (Opening Day) games. :)

No time for game commentary, but it was a great game. Plus it was on TV.

The game was really great, nice close one, however these "corporate guests" during spring training broadcasts have to go. I mean, does anyone care to hear what the rep from Reliant Energy has to say? Who cares, talk baseball, please - and not do an ad piece for your sponsor company. Can't wait until we get Lexus touting how great it is to be involved with the Rangers. Sigh. Thank God for TiVo, so I can skip over these extended advertisements.

Rangers Captain knawing on Chuck Morgan's head was funny, though.

No time for commentary on this game.

I was listening to this game as I was doing a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball Draft. I did something I know is against just about every piece of advice. Never draft a player based off of something they're doing in a game you're listening to. But it was a Rangers Fan League, so I had to do the homer thing. When Kevin Mench jacked a home run in the game, he was my next pick in the draft. I'm so ashamed. :)

Rod Barajas also added a second home run later in the game to go with Mench's. That was really all we needed, but we also had an RBI contribution from Laynce Nix to go with the two each from Mench & Barajas. Actually, we didn't have a lot of offense either. Our total hits were 7. 3 from Mench, 2 from Barajas, and one each from Nix & Teixeira.

The Cubs threw their ace, Carlos Zambrano, who took the loss. He did, however, go 6 innings, giving up 6 hits, and 4ER on one walk, and 5 K's. He was hurt by the longball - if it wasn't for the two jacks, he would have an awesome line.

R.A. Dickey had a better night. He went six (being the first Ranger pitcher to go at least 5 innings), and gave up ZERO runs on 3 hits with 1 walk and 3 strikeouts. A very nice line for him. Very nice. Probably helps him in the race for the fifth starter. However, the Rangers site mentions that we have some talks going on with the Braves (who want bullpen help) for former Ranger John Thomson (FA after 06). While I think RA helped himself last night, he needs to do that four or five times in a row - he's been pretty inconsistant his entire career (to me, anyway).

I also direct you to this article by John Vittas over at MVP Network on last night's Rangers game, RA Dickey, John Thomson, and a bunch of issues on the health of our players. Was a good read.

The wrong direction streak continues. We lost our third in a row to the Chicago White Sox this afternoon, 5-4. We're now 8-11-1 in spring training. It's about now when we start hearing that it doesn't really matter - but let's face it. Who wants to have a losing record in spring training - really?

The big catalyst for the Sox today was former Ranger farmhand Scott Podsednik. Pod went 3 for 4 with two runs scored and an RBI. Gustavo Molina (is he related to the other three?) also teamed with Pod going 2 for 3 with 2 RBI's as well. Between the two of them they covered just about all the "important" offense for the White Sox.

Three of those runs were against Kevin Milwood, who gave 'em up in 4.1 innings. The other two were against Fabio Castro, who finally melts down and gives up some runs. Francisco Cordero and Akinori Otsuka also pitched, but didn't give up any runs. Combined, our staff went 9IP, giving up 13 hits, 5ER, 6K, & 3BB. 2 to 1 walk ratio isn't bad, but I'd prefer less walks still. Zero would be nice. :)

Offensively, we had three solo home runs. One each by Kevin Mench (his fifth), Ian Kinsler (fourth), & Mark DeRosa (his first). Botts went 2 for 4, and Blalock & Young both went 2 for 3, so our offense was a little more "bunched".

Hey guys - weekend TV games coming up! There's one on Sunday afternoon, and then Monday night, there's a half our "2006 Season preview", as well as a half hour Rangers pregame show, and then a game on TV with Josh & Tom - so get ready. :)

Well, we've turned into a pretty streaky team trying to tread water in spring training. We lose again, 10-5 to the Brewers to drop to 8-10-1 overall. The two pitchers we were hoping would grab onto the fifth starter position really both stunk up the joint.

Edison Volquez went 2 innings, gave up 5ER on 5H, 0K, & 3BB - one home run.
Juan Dominguez went 3.1 innings, gave up the other 5ER on 6H, 0K, & 3BB - two home runs.

Not good at all. For guys that should be getting into their game given the opportunity, I'd expect more. Moreso from Dominguez who has had a small taste of success at the majors already. Volquez I'll cut some slack to given how meteoric his rise was through the system last year.

Offensively, the big "standout" was Mark DeRosa, who went 2 for 3, with an RBI and 2 runs scored. Laird, Jimenez, & Durazo scored our other runs. Given I was finishing up my big project at work, I didn't get to pay any attention to the game, so I don't know how any of it really "felt".

The Rangers lost totally to the Angels on Tuesday after a day off. The less said about this one, the better.

These are the kind of games that are easy to write for. First off, your team does really well. That makes it a lot easier to write about the team. Second, low scoring shutouts also mean there's less to write about, as not as many things happened. :)

This game started off with Adam Eaton pitching for Texas. He unfortunately came out of the game in the second, as he was hit by a batted ball. Apparently, he's OK, but it's never good to see one of your starters (and the projected #2) come out of a spring training game being hit by a ball. From what I've read since, we're fortunate it wasn't a serious injury. However, his removal from the game didn't stop our pitching. Fabio Castro came in and went 3 innings, giving up just two hits. What's amazing to me about this game wasn't so much the shutout, but the fact that we didn't walk anyone. Texas sent out seven pitchers in all, and they all combined for a 6 hit shutout of the Cubs, walking none and striking out 9. A really nice looking game in the box scores. A lot of zeroes. :)

Offensively, we couldn't get much going against the Cubs, either. Texas only had 6 hits overall (2 by Dellucci). In fact, it was Dellucci who gave us all we needed, going 2 for 2 with an RBI triple. Kevin Mench had the other RBI. In all, we had 6 hits, Chicago had 5. Not a lot of offense, but we had enough, because our pitching carried us on Sunday.

The Rangers had their usual power display today. They had three home runs, one each from David Dellucci, Brad Wilkerson, & Adam Hydzu. But it wasn't enough. We lost to the Diamondbacks, 6-5. Dellucci had two RBI's in the game, but the other 3 were by others - two were home runs, and the other was Rod Barajas.

Kevin Milwood started his first A-game spring training contest for the Rangers, and early on, looked fine. Eric & Vic seemed to be telling the story that he was looking good this day. He appeared to run out of gas in the fifth, as he gave up three runs there, for a total of 4ER over his 4.2IP. Not a great line at all, but one gets the feeling that it's nothing to worry about. The remainder of our pitchers went 4.1IP, giving up 2 runs on 7 hits with 5K & 3BB.

Of course, the big news for the day for me was TO being a Cowboy. Hahahahahaha! Can't wait for the trip to Philly. :D

The project continues. This was on TV, actually, I picked it up off of the Chicago channel, but I had seen the score before I came home, so there's almost no point when I know the score.

The short notes version:

Back to .500.
Blalock, Nix, Laird all had home runs
All four Ranger pitchers gave up at least two runs
Mark Buehrle got bombed.
Nix & Laird had 3 RBI each

Hopefully I'll get to listen to Saturday's game on the radio. :)

This was another game that I didn't get to pay attention to due to my big project at work this week. This will probably extend into next week, too. However, a quick glance at the box score shows a few highlights:

Kevin Mench had a home run.
Our pitching was fairly decent - 9IP, 3ER, 7H, 7K, 5BB (too many walks)
None of our batters had more than one hit total.

Nice to stop the losing streak.

Mench picked off in the first
Ian Kinsler caught stealing in the second
D'Angelo Jimenez mental error on the bases doubled off.
Runner thrown out at home

Those were my only notes I took during yesterday's game, as I've been horribly busy with a big project at work. Was nice to see Kinsler get a home run, too. That's about all I have time for today. :)

This game was available on MLB's Gameday audio with the Giants feed. They were nowhere near as bad as the Royals announcers have been - in fact one day when the Royals guys were available, I didn't even listen - UGH! Anyway, I didn't get to hear much of the game, but what I did hear was entertaining. Mostly because I enjoyed the guy the Giants had on who normally did Spanish broadcasts, and the English guys kept asking him what this was or what that was in Spanish. I liked that. However, if you listened to the game, you'll recognize this.. "Hello Chicago! - I've got $100 to give away", or "Here we go Giants, Here we go!".. Does the Giants radio coverage have any other commercials? It seems that's all they played was these two!

I did get to hear Bonds' sacrifice bunt - the Giants announcers really seemed surpirsed by that. In reading the coverage of this, Bonds only has 4 in season bunts his entire career, not once since 1998. So it was amusing. Of course he jacked a home run off of John Danks which wasn't surprising in the least. Danks wasn't all that great, going 4, giving up four hits and 2ER, and walked two. Not terribly dominant, but overall, not as horrible as I've seen, either. The other 5 Ranger pitchers combined to go 4 innings, giving up 3 hits and one run. They struck out four and walked no one.

We didn't have a lot of offense to match San Francisco. We had a total of 9 hits (2 each by Nix & Blalock), the rest were scattered amongst the Ranger batters. Not much pop, although D'Angelo Jimenez had a home run in the second which was about it for us.

We've now dropped three in a row and have fallen under .500 with a 5-6-1 spring record.

The Rangers threw out four pitchers today. Only one of them is one I think will make the big club (Edison Volquez, unless Roger Clemens decides to sign here (ha!), in which cose it's zero). Of the four, two of them gave up runs (Volquez, Mahar), although one of the two Volquez gave up was unearned. Alfonseca was scoreless (gasp), as well as Fabio Castro (who I think we're probably gonna lose having to give back on the Rule 5 rules). I don't have any big inside info, just a gut feeling.

Overall, it wasn't a bad pitching performance if you add our four pitchers together. 9 IP, 6 hits, 3R (2 ER), 8K, 3BB. Would rahter not see three walks, but overall it wasn't too bad, really.

And yet we lost again - for the second game in a row, dropping us to 500 (5-5-1). KC' starter was Mile Wood, and he was better than our guys, going 5 innings, giving up no runs on four hits. Matter of fact, of the four relievers KC used, there was a combined 6 hits for 2 runs (only 1ER) over the remaining four frames. KC's pitching didn't dominate, but it was certainly enough for them to get the win.

Since Saturday's game was rained out, I was looking forward to this one, because it was on the radio with Eric & Vic. However, after I came home from church, I passed out on the couch, and all I got to hear of the game was the final out. Oh joy. :) If this were TV, it wouldn't have mattered, as I would have TiVo'ed the game. :)

It appears that the big star of this game is Seattle pitcher Felix Hernandez. I don't think anyone who follows baseball well doubts this kid's ability, so I won't go into that here (getting tired of hearing the word phenom). Anyway, he did a great job against us, something I expect to be saying a few more times this season. He went three innings, gave up no runs on three hits and three strikeouts (with one walk). Overall, a really good performance, although the box score can't tell you about his "stuff", which when he's on is pretty much impossible.

Josh Rupe was our starter and went 3.1 innings, giving up 2 runs on 4 hits and no walks, while striking out three. Not a great performance numbers wise, but not horrible, either. Juan Dominguez, who by all acounts is falling out of favor with the team, gave up the other two runs in his 2.2 IP. Scott Feldman & Kevin Walker combined for two innings of shutout ball to finish up the game.

Offensively, we were led by Kevin Mench, who went 2 for 3 with a run scored. Phil Nevin continued his offensive barrage, going just 1 for 2, but he did drive in 2 RBI on a double, giving him about 5,000 RBI this spring so far. :)

Funny, my report sounds pretty positive, but we lost the game. :(

Saturday's game against the Rockies was rained out. This ended a streak of 143 straight days without rain the Phoenix area. The Dallas area had a taste of that not too long ago.

Kameron Loe lost his start today because of the weather, but did get work in with indoor simulated games.

Here is a story on the Rangers site about the rainout.

I forgot that we played a second game on Thursday evening, going against the Japanese World Baseball Classic team. This was an exhibition game, it didn't count in the spring training standings - was also a split squad game.

It's pretty hard to write about this, as I can't seem to locate a box score for it anywhere. If you know of one, please leave a comment below where to find it. This is one I would have liked to have watched on TV. From what I can see, it appears to be a pretty evenly played game through five, when we were up 2-1. However, it broke out from there, as we scored two in the 6th and four in the 7th, to essentially seal the deal.

Some highlights: Ian Kinsler went two for three with an RBI, RA Dickey went three innings giving up just one run, and John Danks threw three innings of scoreless relief for the win. For Japan, their starter Daisuke Matsuzaka went four innings, giving up just one lone run - their pen let them down.

Took a look at the linescore right now before heading home for the day, and wow. Another game with no pitching to speak of. The Rangers won 15-10.

No recap from me - too busy at work to write.

No recap from me - too busy at work to write.

I'll have more on this later, as I was watching the World Baseball Classic games this afternoon, so I haven't had time to check out what happened here in detail.

Edit Later: No I won't - I got too busy with work on Wed & Thu to go back and write about Tuesday's game.

The game just ended, and there's no box score available yet, but this looked ugly. 36 hits, 24 runs. Yeah, yeah - I know. Spring Training. Players we won't see anymore. Still. Bleargh! :)

I'll have more on this one once a box score shows up and I get some time this evening to sit down and write. :) Although I will say this. D'Angelo Jimenez got the save? He's not a pitcher - I can't wait to see the box score on this one!

Later Update: When I saw D'Angelo Jimenez got the save, I immediately IM'ed Jamey Newberg who called that "bs". :) He was right, it was the wrong name in there. But given as many hits and runs we had, the thought of having a position player isn't that unrealistic. :) Anyway...

As I've said already, this was an offensively dominated game. There was no coverage at all, so it was a "refresh the box score" game. After I saw us go up 7-2 after the top of the second inning, I was feeling pretty good. Then we went up 12-3 after 5, I was really feeling good. Then the old Peckaway theory came into play. The Dbacks started coming back. It was 12-8 after 6, 12-11 after 8, and then we got one in the top of the ninth, which we needed, as they also scored in the bottom of the ninth. As I said, no good pitching around, really. Of the 13 pitchers used total by both sides, only 3 of them didn't give up any runs at all (Fabio Castro for us, and M Chico & F Heredia for Arizona). The worst offender was Russ Ortiz, the starter for Arizona. He gave up 7 earned runs on seven hits and two walks in his two innings of work.

That was capped off by a Kevin Mench grand slam. Mench added another RBI later on to lead all players with 5RBI in the game. Joaquin Arias & Adrian Brown both went 3-4 for us, and both scored. There's just too many players with hits, runs, RBI to detail here, just look at the box score below. :)

13-11 - seems like a mid season game to me. :)

The Rangers lost to the Brewers on Sunday by the score of 9-3. There was a big old ugly 6 spot in the 8th that was the primary reason we lost.

However, I don't feel like writing about it right now. The adoption I mentioned yesterday fell through, and I'm pretty devastated. :(

Well, I listened to most of today's game. However, since I have a 10 month old baby, and today was daddy's day to spend with her, you can't give the game your total attention. I did listen to it, but didn't take in many details. These are the only actual notes I managed to take: :)

* Royals go up 2-0 on a 2 run double by Doug Mientk in the 1st
* Rod Barajas brings it back with a home run first pitch back from a knockdown pitch
* Home run in the 9th

I was going to retroactively create an update, however, before I sat down tonight to do it, I found out that I'm going to be an uncle, my brother and his wife have been trying to adopt a child for awhile now, and got "the call", and are going across country tomorrow to handle all that, so my mind is elsewhere right now. :)

Game two of spring training ended the same way that a lot of regular season games have gone for the Rangers recently. We lost. But we lost blowing a lead, and oh yeah - we scored all our runs on home runs. That sounds awfully familiar, and a tad scary. Yeah, yeah - it's only game 2 of spring training, but still.

I didn't get to listen to much of this game, due to projects at work - so much so I even forgot it had started, and tuned in in the bottom of the second when we had been up 3-0 already. At that poiint we had had two home runs already - one by Phil Nevin again, and one by Ian Kinsler.

Rangers starter Rick Bauer was good, going two innings, giving up just one hit, and striking out four. That was a good line. The next two Ranger pitchers were Antonio Alfonseca, and Fabio Castro. Alfonseca gave up a home run, as did Castro - Castro's was on the first pitch he threw. That's all I heard for awhile due to work concerns. When I tuned back in again in the seventh, the first thing I heard was the Royals taking the lead, going up 6-3 in that inning. They added another one to go up 7-3.

The Rangers got their only other runs in the ninth, when Aaromn Baldiris jacked a three run home run to make it 7-6, and that's where it ended. KC pitcher Juan Cedeno had a terrible inning in the 9th, giving up 4 hits, three runs in his frame. He did, however, strike out the side. We left the tying run on base.

Again, a rather familiar sounding game. At least tomorrow I'll be home and might be able to concentrate on the game more, although I'll be doing the Daddy thing as Mommy works on Saturdays. :)

Well, the first official spring training game of the season ends in a 5-5 tie after 11 innings. As I'm sure you'll read from a lot of fans today it was great to have baseball back. It always is. But it's always tempered by the fact that it's not our announcers. We got to listen to the Royals' announcers, who really irritated me (more on that later).

I missed the start of the game due to it being on while I was working, but I tuned in just in time to hear Phil Nevin take one out of the park for a home run. In the third, our offense was aided by an error by Mark Grudzilanek, allowing another run to score, giving us three. It should have actually been a lot more than that, but we left the bases loaded in that frame against Jeremy Affeldt. Kevin Mench had a sac fly in the fifth, ending our offense. At that point we were up 5-0, and feeling good, as none of our pitchers had given up much.

In the top of the sixth, Buck Showalter made wholesale changes in the field - something that started me on the Royals announcers calling our entire team on the field "a bunch of players no onas hever heard of". Oh, like anyone's ever heard of guys like Mat Tupman or Ryan Baerlocher, either you twonks. Really irritated me. Anyway, the players that Buck brought in for the sixth were Jamie Burke 1B - Aarom Baldiris 2B - Joaquin Arias SS - D'Angelo Jiminez 3B - Jason Botts LF - Adrian Brown CF - Adam Hyzdu RF - Nick Trezniak C.

And that was just the fielders. Buck made a boatload of pitching changes - having used 8 pitchers in all. Josh Rupe started, and went two innings of shutoutball. Thomas Diamond followed, and went 1.2, giving up no runs, but did allow a hit and two walks. A little shaky, but got the job done. Of the 6 that followed (Volquez, Walker, Durocher, Wasdin, Diaz, & Mahay), we gave up 5 runs over 7.1 IP. 2 were by Durocher, who we won't see in the bigs, and two were by Wasdin, who we will. The other was by Edison Volquez, who probably won't break camp with us, but will be up at some point, I'd wager.

However, the guy of the day was our old buddy Benji Gil, who is still floating around. He's in camp with the Royals on a non roster invite, and today looked good. He had a double and a triple driving in the Royals' first and the tying runs. Another former Ranger was in this game, pitcher David Elder. David Elder is known for two things. First he was the guy we sent to Cleveland in a trade for John Rocker. Second, he was the pitcher on the mound when Rafael Palmeiro got his 500th home run (which I was there to see). Elder was pretty good in his one inning of work - he was perfect.

One final thing about the Royals announcers. They were riding Buck Showalter pretty hard about all the pitching changes. All I wanted to do was to tell these guys to shut up and announce the game and stop whining about the opposing manager. Especially when their own manager used two MORE pitchers than Buck did. The Royals threw 10 pitchers, we only had 8. Really irritated me. Remind me not to listen to thse twonks again, OK?

The game went extra innings, but I was forced to stop listening after 9 due to being called away at work for something. It'll be nice to hear Eric Nadel & Victor Rojas tomorrow afternoon. :)