Random Ranger Ramblings by Joe Siegler
The Rangers survived this game, really. Four of the five Rangers pitchers gave up runs, but our offense stepped in and saved the day. Jeff Baker, who is tearing it up this spring doubled. Craig Gentry homered (his second), and is showing some surprising pop this spring. If he can sustain that, it will help an awful lot going forward.
Not a ton to write about this one, the pitching was “meh” from what I can see. :)
…and this was the second of the two split squad games Saturday. This is the road game, managed by Ron Washington with a starting lineup that featured only Craig Gentry & Geovany Soto (maybe Mike Olt) from the expected opening day roster. This was borne out in the pitching staff too, as the Rangers used nine different pitchers, each throwing one inning. All but one of them threw a scoreless inning. The only one who didn’t was Tateyama, who gave up the two Padres runs. It was a two run home run, as well. Tateyama actually only faced five batters!
This was the first of two games today as the Rangers did the split squad thing, also playing against the Padres in another game. But before we get to that..
Where was this game in the final series of last season? Gah! Could have saved ourselves from that mess that was the Orioles game in the playoffs! Barf. Anyway…
Friday’s game against the Brewers was rained out, but as is the custom in the spring, it wasn’t rescheduled, it was just lost.
They actually played – four innings, but nothing counted, as the game was called off. Given it was cancelled, I can’t find a log of what happened, as the gameday for this game is gone from mlb.com. Oh well.
Well, a second tie in the first baker’s dozen of games wipes out the odd “-1″ from the end of the spring training record. Now we had two of them. Not a really uncommon occurrence during the spring, but it’s a tad eyebrow raising to have two of them in the first dozen or so games. :)
Josh Lindblom, the big “name” we got in return for the Michael Young trade was the last pitcher on the mound for the Rangers, and he served it up. Gave up a three run home run to cap a Dodgers rally, that made the score 11-11. Was hoping this guy would be more dominant, but from what I’ve heard from my friends back home, this is about par for the course. [Read more...]
Texas got down early, when they gave up a run to the Cubs in the first, but turned it around quickly with a two spot of their own in the second. They added a run in the third, to go up 3-1, but that was the end of the scoring for the Rangers. They hung on for the win despite the Cubs getting another run in the top of the sixth to make it 3-2. But that was the final score for this one. Close game against the Northsiders. [Read more...]
Yu Darvish started this game, and pitched like he’s supposed to. Three scoreless innings were his tally. He did walk two, but that was it. Also threw just 39 pitches, so under average, and no runs. I’ll take that from any of our pitchers any day. Great way to get rolling during early March play.
Another spring first. Joe Nathan makes his spring debut. But before they got to him, Justin Grimm continues to show that his debut last year was his best game, as he got knocked around a lot in this one. Which seems to be the story every time I write about him anymore. Let’s put it this way. This early in the spring, pitchers don’t get taken out mid inning. Grimm did. 2.1 IP, 6H, 2BB, 6ER, 4K, 2HR. Not good. His ERA is 18.69. [Read more...]
The Rangers are now 1-1 in March, which seems much better than their overall crappy record so far this spring. :)
Matt Harrison took the hill, which was no surprise. Lance Berkman led off for the Rangers, which WAS a surprise. I know, it’s early in spring, and people do different things. It’s early for Lance, and he needs to test his battle worn body to see if ti will hold up. It’s not like a rehab game where he gets to lead off every inning, but putting him at the #1 spot will get him some more action than his likely normal spot. [Read more...]
In a game that featured a home run and four doubles, the Rangers managed a total of nine hits for six runs. Not a bad efficiency rating. However, our usual spring training nemesis came back to bit us. That’s the “Guys who have no chance of actually making the club do us in”. That happens a lot in Spring Training. It happened here this game, too.
Mitch Moreland’s home run was a highlight. I liked that. Michael Kirkman’s outing was quite nice – I say he has a good chance to make the club when we break. Beyond that, not a ton to write about. Plus I’m a dozen or so games behind in writing these anyway. :)
The last game of February brought the first win of the Rangers young season. They’re now 1-5-1. What a powerhouse!
Seriously though – the Rangers pitching was pretty good here. The Rangers used six pitchers in all, and combined, they only allowed five total hits. And all five of those came with the first two pitchers. The remaining guys (Robertson, Woods, Beliveau, & Yan) all threw scoreless frames. [Read more...]
That’s two games in two days against the White Sox. Two losses in a row to the White Sox. While this one wasn’t as bad as yesterday’s game, we still gave up eight runs, and well, LOST.
Alexi Ogando technically got the loss, but he wasn’t awful. He gave up just two runs, but both were unearned. Robbie Ross gave up two earned runs, and Colin Balester gave up FOUR in his inning. So yeah, bleargh on pitching for the most part.
The Rangers had eight hits in all. A good game for the slugging percentage, that’s for sure. Four doubles and a triple. That will help that stat. :) Only Jeff Baker had more than one hit (two, one was a double).
It’s Feb 27th, but man – enough with the losses already.
Well, this can be summed up quickly. Yu Darvish was good. Not much else was.
Darvish went two innings, throwing perfect ball. Struck out two, throwing just 28 pitches.
By contrast, Cody Buckel had a bizarre line. 0.1 IP, 0H, 5BB, 6R, 4ER. Evan Meek also gave up five earned runs in his fraction of an inning.
Olt had a home run, but that’s the most exciting thing to talk about offensively.
Next, please.
The Rangers are still winless this spring with a record of 0-3-1 after a big loss to the Rockies on Monday. In other news, the Cleveland Indians are 5-0. Guess those big signings of Nick Swisher & Michael Bourn are paying off. Or it’s Tito. But I digress. I’m also tired and pumped full of decongestant, so my head is a bit weird tonight. :) Back to the Rangers. When you have a loss like 9-1, you have to go digging for the positives usually. Which means trawling the box score and the beat writers’ coverage as again this was a no broadcast game. [Read more...]
Well, I had forgotten this was on, and I was starting work. When I realized I missed the start of the game, I put on the MLB Gameday app, as this was one of those “no broadcast” games during the spring. Well, it was being broadcast by the Kansas City broadcasters, and after having listened to them a few times in the past couple of years, I decided to go no audio and have the game on MLB Gameday only. I thought I would have missed a lot more than I did, but then I saw what happened early… [Read more...]
Tried to pay attention to this game, but I’ve come down with some sickness since yesterday, and it sapped my energy. Given I had to watch my kids, I didn’t have enough going on upstairs to watch them, and focus on the game. Heck, I fell asleep twice when the game was on! This will be a box score recap, since I barely saw just a few minutes of the game on my iPad… [Read more...]
Spring training started back up on Friday afternoon (seems to be Fridays a lot), and with it brought the sound of Eric Nadel coming out of my radio (although for this game it was my computer speakers). I’m not going to try and describe that. If you’re reading this post, then you know what I’m talking about. [Read more...]
My site has been going for awhile now, and during that time I’ve seen several broadcasters come and go. However, one of the more polarizing ones was Josh Lewin, who was the television play by play guy from 2002 through 2010. I say polarizing, because there’s a lot of fans who really disliked him. There’s a lot of fans who really did like him. For the most part I liked him – although I did think there were too many forays into movies and food, but whether you liked his work or not, you can’t deny the man was a pro, and a hard worker. He was ready for the games he broadcast. I wish he was here for more of them (never liked the weekends away), but that’s all in the past now. Today I’m here to talk about his book, “Ballgame!: A Decade Covering the Texas Rangers from the Best Seat in the House”. Or as I call it, “Ballgame!”. [Read more...]
Have three open slots in one of my two Yahoo leagues. Here’s the details for it.
URL: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/rangerfans2
League ID: 49630
pw: onestriketogo
Draft: Sat Mar 16 @ 8PM Central
I do have one open slot, maybe two in the other league, but I need to confirm two people before I’m sure there. Will post about that one when I am.
It’s free, and if you want to play, please. Join. But, please join only if you intend on playing the whole season out. Nothing worse than a person who bails out in April.
As we move on with the earliest stages of spring training, I’m updating some parts of my site, getting them ready for the upcoming season. One of which is a photo page that shows all (well, a lot, I’d be a liar to say it’s all) the pocket schedule images from 1972-2013. From the mid 90′s onwards, I’ve gotten them myself at the games, earlier than that I’ve acquired via finding them on the net, or having someone send in pictures for me. Today, I have someone to thank. His name is Bob – he never sent me his last name.
While I have at least one schedule for every season the club has been in texas, I’m pretty sure I don’t have all the variants produced. Bob sent me five images of alternate versions I did not have, so I put them up on my site. Check out these historical remnants from the past..
It looks like Robbie Ross has been to “Round Rock Donuts” in Round Rock TX. It looks like a giant glazed donut!
Saw tonight that FOX posted their national 2013 TV schedule, so I decided to check out ESPN as well, and come up with a list of games the Rangers are scheduled to play. Now, national coverage being what it is means it can change. If the Rangers get super hot, the schedule will get changed around, and we might get a few more later in the season. But for now, here’s the 2013 national coverage schedule for FOX & ESPN. These times are all Central.
Sun Mar 31 @ 7:05 – Rangers @ Astros – ESPN
Sat Apr 06 @ 2:30 – Angels @ Rangers – FOX
Sun Apr 07 @ 7:05 – Angels @ Rangers – ESPN
Sun May 19 @ 7:05 – Tigers @ Rangers – ESPN
Sat Jun 22 @ 6:00 – Rangers @ Cardinals – FOX
Sat Jun 29 @ 6:00 – Reds @ Rangers – FOX
Sat Jul 06 @ 6:00 – Astros @ Rangers – FOX
Sat Jul 13 @ 6:00 – Rangers @ Tigers – FOX
Sat Aug 03 @ 6:30 – Rangers @ A’s – FOX
Sat Sep 14 @ 11:30 – A’s @ Rangers – FOX
Sep 14th is an 11:30AM game? That doesn’t happen here. What else is happening that day? Anyone have any ideas?
I just noticed that 2013 Yahoo Fantasy Baseball is up and running again for the new year. I just saw it, and I’m pretty tired and will be heading to bed soon, so I’ll look into this tomorrow and get the ball rolling again.
I’ve been a Dallas Morning News Subscriber for some time. However, in the last few years, I mostly read the paper on my iPad. As a subscriber, I can read the content there, and frequently do. However…
Yesterday morning in the Sunday paper was Evan Grant’s spring training preview. THAT – for some reason demands to be read in the physical newspaper. Oh sure, I can read it on my iPad, or on my web browser. But for some reason, spring training materials to me need to read in a “real” newspaper, with a cup of coffee preferably.
Now that I’ve done these, I’m ready for spring training to start. :)
I’ve been doing this site for some time now (2013 will be my 15th season for this site), and in all that time, there’s been two things I’ve done on my site that no other Rangers fan site has attempted. Perhaps because I already did them – or nobody wanted to wade through all the info needed to put them together (“Eh, Joe’s already done that – good enough”). One of them is my history of uniform numbers. It starts back in 1961 with the Senators years and runs to current. I’ve been doing this part of the site for the last 5-6 years or so (forget when I started it actually). Because of that, uniform numbers in the most recent years are pretty darned accurate insofar as guys who are up for just 2-3 games, never to be seen again. In years past, I have guys who wore the major numbers, but the small fiddly changes like that aren’t always listed (because that info’s realy hard to find). I’ve taken pride in my uniform number archives, and it’s gotten me a reputation as the uniform number guy. When he was still with the Rangers, I know Victor Rojas mentioned my site as a source of that a few times, and it must have stuck, because last year I got a question from the great Eric Nadel about some fiddly bit in the past with uniform numbers – I was honored. Even Anthony Andro knows me as that, as I’ve asked him a boatloat of times about uniform numbers. :) [Read more...]
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