As the season draws to a close, it’s getting hard to get motivated to write about games like this. I still like the team, and still care, but another season like this means that game numbers above say 135 are ones I’m less inclined to write about. Sometimes I’m tempted to go “Ah they lost. If you’re reading this, then you probably know why already anyway”. Still, I didn’t want to quit on the season, so I’ll have a few words to say:
Kevin Millwood started the game, and coming into this series, I felt good about our chances of passing Oakland and staying out of the basement. Early on though it didn’t seem like that was a possibility. We went down 2-0 in the first inning, and then 4-1 after three, and then 6-1 after five. Blech. Seen this story before. Rangers starter struggles, gives up a bunch of runs, team can’t come back. I’d expect that from youngsters, but not Kevin Millwood – a veteran. He just looked flat. 92 pitches in 4.2 innings, 8 hits, 3 walks, 6 earned runs. Very Mark Clark like. On the positive side, our bullpen didn’t give up any more in their 3.1 innings of work.
We did try and come back late though. After a mostly sleepy offense which generated just one run through six innings, we got some offense going in the seventh. Single, double, single resulted in the first run. Then Ian Kinsler was hit by a pitch, and Michael Young doubled home the other two runs. Was kind of a bang-bang sequence, not a long buildup of 10 pitch at bats and just singles. Kind of happened in a hurry, if you take out a pitching change in the middle.
But it wasn’t enough. It got us close, but the scoring was over at that point. Another loss. Sigh.
