Game two went a lot better than game one. As I’ve said a million times before when facing a knuckleball pitcher, you either are shut down and get nothing, or you tee off and score 50 runs. There doesn’t appear to be any middle ground. Tonight we got the “tee off” version. We faced Tim Wakefield, whom we always seem to have decent success against. And we got off quickly, going up 4-0 after the first four batters of the game with no one out. That pretty much set the tone for this game. All the offense that wasn’t there against Schilling was against Wakefield.
On the flip side, Vicente Padilla delivered what Millwood didn’t in the first game – a dominating pitching performance. He had great movement on all his pitches, a dominating looking curveball, and he threw some really nice smoke when he needed it. He struck out Manny Ramirez twice. In fact, Ramirez struck out three times (the other by Otsuka). He was definitely kept in check. Padilla looked really great, and I felt he could have come out for another inninmg, but I guess you don’t want to stretch ’em out too far this early in the season.
Offensively, we were led by Phil Nevin, who had a total of 5 RBI for the night on two hits. We had 13 hits in all, spread out pretty nicely. The only starter without any hits was Laynce Nix, who has been bashing the ball the first two games, but hasn’t anything to show for it yet. Oh, and Kinsler didn’t have any hits either, but that’s not a problem. Kevin Mench had two doubles, Mike Young got one for his first hit of the season, and of course being the Rangers we had three home runs (Nevin, Barajas, & Wilkerson).
Overall a much more enjoyable game for Rangers fans than opening day was. Tomorrow we face Josh Beckett, who will be pitching at home (he’s from Texas), so he’ll probably be way up for that game.