The picture below of Buck Showalter arguing with an umpire below pretty much sums up this game. Pedro Astacio pitched even worse than Chan Ho Park did the first three years here and allowed seven runs in the first inning, and exiting after .2 IP in the game. That’s an ERA of 94.5 for this game. Hell, Rangers Captain could probably pitch better than that. Nolan Ryan RIGHT NOW could pitch better than that. Hell, I bet even Jose Canseco could pitch better. OK, I think you get my point. There was a smell coming from the pitcher’s mound of epic proportions in the first inning. Oddly enough, that’s where it ended.
Joaquin Benoit allowed 4H and 1 run in his 4.1IP. Kameron Loe allowed no runs and a single hit in his two innings. Mahay and CoCo allowed a hit each, but no runs. Our bullpen was pretty spectacular, too bad Astacio was craptacular.
Offensively, Alfonso Soriano led the way with two home runs and four RBI’s. Blalock also had a homer, and Gary Matthews chipped in for the 6th RBI. But it wasn’t enough due to the craptacularlness of Pedro Astacio. Another of those, and we won’t be seeing anymore “Vote for Pedro” signs at the Ballpark, eh?
Buck Showalter got tossed for the first time as a Rangers manager. Was cool though to see him turn his hat around backwards and argue – the mark of a true manager/ump argument, IMO. That and Billy Martin’s old “Kicking dirt” piece which I’ve seen Lou Piniella do a few times. :)
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Gary Darling is an absolute moron.
I was at the game… other than the idiots leaving at the end of the 8th inning (with the Rangers just having scored 3 runs) and of course the first 2/3 of the first inning, it was a very entertaining game. Johnny Oates’ old “peck-away theory” nearly brought it back, and Blalock had a pretty nice night. The fans really got into the last couple of innings, and the feeling was electric when Showalter got into it with the first base ump, finally getting ejected and throwing his cap to the crowd. Now I’ve gotta see the replay of that double play to see what *really* happened…
If you saw the replay on the DP, you would clearly see that while it was pretty close, it appeared that MY was safe. The check swing was a lot more damaging though, IMO. It was an absolute no doubter, wasn’t even a real close one. Darling completely blew that and turned the count from 3-1 (which would have given MY a big advantage) to 2-2.
On the check swing, Grieve basically said in the booth that he blew the call. You usually hear announcers skirt around something like that to make it sound like it could have been the right call – but this was bad enough that it was a no doubter even for Grieve.