Blowout! Oh my. There’s just too many things to talk about, I’ll probably forget a few.
When I saw the pitching lineup for this game, I expected it to be a high scoring game. I figured that Glynn would give up a few, and Ken Hill would probably get knocked around, as he’s not that good this year (has he ever been since we traded him to Anaheim?). However, I didn’t figure that it would end up quite like this! Of course, all 18 didn’t come from Hill, it was spread out all over the place – we didn’t score in just two of the 9 innings. It didn’t seem to matter whom the Angels sent out there to pitch, we banged ’em around really good last night.
We continued our recent dominance of the Angels in Anaheim, by taking the last 6 games there (going to last September), outscoring them a total of 57-8 in those six games. This series that just ended was 32-5, with 4 of the 5 coming in last night’s game alone! What’s more interesting is that even scoring 18 runs, we also left twelve guys on base – it could have been a whole lot worse – It’s just too bad we can’t do this against the Yankees, dammit!
Todd Zeile & Raffy each went four for four with four RBI’s. With 20 hits and 18 runs, you’d think we had some longball. We didn’t, there was only one home run, and it was a solo shot from a very non home run hitting Mark McLemore. It’s nice, as Mark was hitting the ball well this entire series, but didn’t get a whole lot to show for it. Mark could have had about 13 hits in 3 games, the way he was hitting the ball, it seemed.
Ryan Glynn wasn’t as stellar as Burkett & Morgan were the last two nights, but he pitched fairly well, working out of a jam with the bases loaded in the second or third, not allowing the Angels any runs, which was good. He did give up two runs in the 6th, which was when he was pulled. Mike Venafro gave up the other two (with Patterson & Kolb pitching an inning each, not giving up anything). Our pitching was fairly decent – it wasn’t as stellar as the last two nights, but you can’t have that every time. One interesting note – Glynn’s last two outings have resulted in the Rangers giving him run support of 14 & 18. :)
Bad news, as Pudge jammed his knee going into first base, and had to be helped off the field. As I write this on 2:45PM Thursday afternoon, there’s still no word as to his condition – I really hope it’s not a big break, as the AL All-Star teams are about to be announced, and I want his streak of appearances to continue.
Let’s see how we do against Seattle over the July 4th weekend. The Rangers have Thursday off, so if the A’s beat the Mariners, that means we’ll go into the weekend series with a 6 game lead on Seattle, a 7 game lead on Oakland, and a 9.5 game lead on Anaheim. I really would LOVE it if we could get to 10 games over the second place team by the All-Star break, but that probably won’t happen. I’ll be happy if we can maintain this lead we have now. :)