A frustrating game. I have to admit that before the game started, I predicted doom. The two highest paid AL pitchers went head to head, but since the pitching quality of said pitchers wasn’t quite the same, I expected us to be losing something like 10-0 after 5 innings. We did have an ugly start early, but managed to get out of the first five innings only down 4-1. Not insurmountable, especially given that Pedro did not seem like Pedro. He gave up 6 walks in his time on the mound, threw 120 pitches, and seemed at least reachable, if not hittable, as we only had a hit or two through that time. Pedro was still pretty good.
However, their bullpen was not. After we gave up another run by Esteban (Oh NO) Yan in the 8th on a home run, we stormed back in the bottom of the eighth. We scored 3 times to make the score 5-4. That was capped by a two run home run by Juan Gonzalez, and we had two on with two outs. Kevin Mench hit what looked like a liner to left, but it didn’t hook quite enough, and we were out. We almost won it again in the bottom of the 8th. Arod was on first with two outs after having reached there on a fielder’s choice after BARELY beating out a double play ball.
Raffy jacked one to right field, and it died about 3 feet from the fence. We had a total of three balls that missed home runs by a few feet each. Blalock, Raffy, & I forget who else had one, but if we had the usual Texas wind, we would have had probably about 4 or 5 more runs, and won the game.
Carl Everett had another really nice play in left to take away a double – his being named AL Player of the Week seems to be carrying over so far into this week. :)
