That’s always an embarrassing headline to write. In theory, one should never lose to one’s own minor league team. Still, that’s what our Rangers did. Yeah, it’s the last game, yeah it doesn’t even count in the SPRING standings. But still, you don’t want to lose that for pride. But my guess is nobody will talk about it, since all the movement now is towards tomorrow in Seattle when the season opens for real.
Kason Gabbard had a real Chan Ho Park moment in this game. He started off with four perfect innings. Then he totally lost it, and gave up four runs in the fifth inning, then returned to pitch a scoreless sixth. When you five four perfect in a row, then just give it up like that, it just screams “MENTAL LAPSE” to me. Still, five out of six innings pitched with no runs is very encouraging. Kea Kometani & Bill White gave up the other three runs.
The Rangers offense was pretty non existent. Makes you wonder how hard they really tried against their AA team; perhaps they didn’t want to show them up? Who knows. Ian Kinsler (homer), Marlon Byrd (single), and Michael Young (single) were the only “regular” Rangers with hits. We had seven hits in all, but the other four were from subs (Jason Ellison, Casey Benjamin, Adam Melhuse, Joaquin Arias).
So that’s it. Another spring comes to a close. Our final spring training record was 17-11-2. A pretty decent spring, and we have several batters on tears, and our bullpen is looking pretty good. Starting pitching is a question mark, but when is it not, really?
Unless your name is Randy Galloway, you’ve got to have a decent feeling going into the 2008 season.