As I’m writing a few games’ commentaries on Sunday night off of box scores, the first thing I do is scroll down the page to look at the pitching lines. After the last few stinkfests, I expected another line somewhere where a Ranger pitcher was horrendous and the rest were pretty good.
Well, this game five Rangers pitchers threw, and two gave up runs, and just one was crappy. That was Frank Francisco, who threw just two thirds of an inning, giving up hits, three earned runs and four walks. With a line like that, you’d think he’d have more runs scored against him. Eric Hurley started the game, and went four innings. He had a bunch of 2’s on his line. Two each of hits, runs, walks, strikeouts.
The stinkfest came from the Rockies starter this time. In a stink that you’d actually need TWO Mark Clark outings to get to, Mark Redman went 4.2 innings, giving up ELEVEN hits, seven earned runs, but just one walk. Ewww….
David Murphy was the big name here (mostly because Josh Hamilton didn’t play today). Murphy 3 for 4, scoring twice, and knocking in four. Two of the three hits he had were two run home runs. The other hit was a single. Nelson Cruz also had a good day, going 2-3 with a solo home run of his own.
Ben Broussard went 1-3, and his average is .219. There’s been some talk that Shrek might get time at first base. Kevin is batting .321 this spring, and if these two players keep this up, I wonder how realistic the possibility is that Ben doesn’t make the team, and Kevin does as a first baseman. Jason Botts & Ramon Vazquez also had two hits each.
Nice offensive day that ended with a 10-5 win by the Rangers.