My wife and I were doing some stuff together yesterday, as we won’t have much time for that in a few weeks once the baby arrives. So we’re driving around, and I turned on the XM baseball schedule, and they said the Rangers were on Channel 181. I turned there, and it was Eric! I had forgotten the Rangers were on the radio. So we listened while we were driving around.
I tuned in when we were up 2-0. Then I got to hear Richard Hidalgo hit his second home run, and I got to hear Alfonso Soriano finally get his first hit of the spring – a home run as well. So we were up 5-0. Made a stop, and when we came out, it had gone to 5-3. Uh-oh. As we were driving around, we lost the lead due to some ineffective pitching in the middle innings. We picked up one in the bottom of the 8th to make it 7-6, but we couldn’t get the important tying run across the plate. Wasn’t really a see-saw game, as the lead only changed hands once. Seemed more like a “club the other guy” game. We scored 5. They scored 7, and then we had one late as a final whimper.
Pitching wise, Chris Young did really well his first three innings, not giving up anything. If I’m not mistaken, his entire line came in inning 4, when he likely ran out of gas, which isn’t too common in the first third of spring training games. Travis Hughes came on and poured more gasoline on the fire, giving up 4 runs in his one inning of work. The remaining pitchers we used (Brocail, Montero, Shouse) kept things at bay, not giving up anything else, but we couldn’t come all the way back.
That led us to our fourth spring loss in a row. Last win was last Wednesday against the Cubs. Hopefully Mondays’ game against the Angels will be different. :)
You can view my recap page here.