G30: Rangers take opener against A's, 4-3

This game was a game where you took advantage of the situation. The Rangers had just seven hits overall (and three by the same player; Milton Bradley). There was not a lot of concentrated offense here.

In fact, of the seven runs total in the game, just three of them were earned. Vicente Padilla was hit with that more than Joe Blanton was. Padilla only gave up one earned run, and the Rangers only had one error. The A's, on the other hand had FOUR errors in the game, although one of them was that bogus foul ball where nothing actually happened foul.

Milton Bradley and Gerald Laird doubled, but everything else was a single, so there were no longballs here to account for the "efficient" runs. Joe Blanton only walked one. Heck, Ian Kinsler's RBI was on a groundout to second base. Those kind of runs. :)

Josh Hamilton took an ofer this game, but made a quite spectacular catch in centerfield, to double off Daric Barton, who had gone all the way to third. It was quite the highlight catch, and I think a bit more cool than Gary Matthews catch from two seasons ago.

Our pen was good, too (Wright, Guardado, Benoit, Wilson). No runs allowed by those guys. Nice to see after the recent shaky appearances by Benoit.

VIcente Pidente earned the win, going 5.2 innings, giving up just five hits and four walks (too many walks). He was not as crisp as he has been in his other wins (VIcente threw 108 pitches), but it was enough to get the win.

We're still not that great at 12-18, but the last week or so has been much improved over earlier in the season. Perhaps some of the local talk about Ron Washington's head can go away for now.