After a scheduled day off on Tuesday, the Rangers bounced back into action against their usual and most common spring training foe, the Royals. I didn’t get to see or hear anything from this game – I got tied up with work again, and this is a box score only report. :)
This game had pretty decent pitching for the most part. For Texas, Kevin Millwood started the game, and threw three scoreless innings, giving up just two hits, one walk, and punching out a pair of Royals. I believe that’s the first Ranger pitcher to go three innings this spring. A good sign. He was followed by four relievers. Two of them (Derek Holland & Doug Mathis) threw two innings apiece, and Willie Eyre & Frank Francisco threw a single inning each. Holland & Mathis gave up the two runs (one each). The run off of Mathis was a home run. In all, the Royal hitters had just six hits the entire game. Two of them by Coco Crisp. One of the others was by Crisp’s replacement, so the hits were pretty scattered other than the leadoff slot. In all, Rangers pitching threw nine innings, allowed six hits and two runs. A good day.
Offensively, we were led by Justin Smoak, although his name didn’t really come into play until later. Early on the Rangers plated a single run in the first and second innings. The funny thing here is that the Rangers also had just six hits this game. No Ranger had more than one of them. Michael Young & Jarrod Saltamacchia each had an RBI hit, but the big one was Justin Smoak in the bottom of the seventh. He jacked a three run home run off of KC reliever Dan Cortes. That was the big moment, because at that time, the game was tied 2-2.
Yay! Two game winning streak! ;)