Pitching! Pitching! Pitching! Two days in a row – Woo-hoo! :) We also got our first back to back wins of the spring, too.
I always love it when we play the Pirates or Phillies in spring, because I’m from PA, and both of these teams seem more interesting to me for some reason. Wish I could have heard it, though. Hell, I wish Interleague play lets us play them, but it doesn’t. Hopefully Bud will work something out for next season.
Anyway, we got decent pitching again today. Starter Rick Helling went 4 innings, scattering 6 hits, and allowing only 1 earned run, while walking one, and K’ing 4. Zimmerman, Munoz, Cordero, & Chuck Smith went the other 5 and gave up no earned runs (although one unearned was scored against Smith, who got a save). On the flip side, Pittsburgh got great pitching too, with one exception. Jason Phillips, who only went 2/3 of an inning gave up all three runs the Rangers scored, walking three with only one hit – but three walks (including one with the bases loaded to Stevens) is never good. The rest of their pitching went 7 1/3 innings, giving up no earned runs, and only 3 hits. There’s been some buzz about Pittsburgh being better than most people think – if they get pitching like this all the time, they will be.
Speaking of that, the Rangers only had four hits all day – two by Frank Catalanotto, and the others by Gabe Kapler & Bill Haselman. Not really a whole lot there, we didn’t really win this game, it was handed to us by Jason Phillips.
Today’s game is on the radio, that’ll be cool. I wish the Rangers would get their act together with 2000 TV coverage – read something in the paper today that there will be NO spring games on the TV, there are supposed to be three according to the published schedule at the start of spring – I’m hoping they still happen.