Here’s another game like the Wright/Oswalt game from a few days ago. Who really thought the Rangers and Kameron Loe would be beating the Tigers and Jeremy Bonderman. Bonderman had a 17 game winning streak in his own starts. The cards were stacked against our little team from Texas.
But Kameron Loe pitched like the guy we expected him to be, not the one who was wearing #43 the first couple of months of the season. Kam went seven innings, giving up just two earned runs on seven hits and two walks. One of the runs he gave up was right about when he came out of the game, so he kept the Tigers in check pretty much the entire game. Aki went a scoreless eighth, and we were going to have Gagne, except we removed the save opportunity, so Frank Francisco came out for the ninth. He was a bit shaky, and did give up an unearned run, but got the job done in the end.
Our offense was almost all singles. We had 12 hits in all. 10 of them were singles. One was a double by Wilkerson in the seventh, and the other was a home run by Jerry Hairston in the ninth. Marlon Byrd continues to look good, going 2-5 with 3RBI. Overall a nicely balanced offense.
We’ve been playing great lately, and this is a real test. If we can take the series in Detroit and Boston (the best of the AL now), then we might have really turned things around. I’m not foolish enough to believe playoffs at all, but it’ll be much better than dragging out a lost season, that’s for sure.