The Rangers were held off by Japanese import Koji Uehara for most of the game. From what I gather of him, he’s not a dominant strikeout kind of guy, but early on, he was punching out Rangers at a pretty good clip. In all, he went 6.2 innings, striking out six Rangers – although most of them were in the first couple of innings. Four hits, two runs, he pitched pretty good, certainly well enough to deserve the win. However, his bullpen didn’t hold it for him.
But before we get to that, Vicente Padilla continued to pitch “meh” in 2009. He went the same length as Uehara, 6.2. However, Pidente had seven hits, three walks, with a home run four all four runs the Orioles would get. His season ERA is 8.27. Definitely not good. It feels odd, as you kind of felt (via that gut feeling sort of thing) that he was going to be significantly better than this. He certainly has time to turn it around and be OK, but wow, this is not a good start to the 2009 campaign.
Our pen was pretty good, we had four relievers combine for 2.1 innings, giving up just one hit and two walks, but no runs, the most important stat. One of the relievers was Eddie Guardado who pitched to just one batter, and walked him. Darren O’Day was in this game (with his own uniform), too!
Back to bullpens. Baltimore’s did not hold it for Uehara. First, Jim Johnson gave up a run on four hits, which is surprising that it was just one run. However, the big blow was the home run by Michael Young which gave the Rangers the lead, and the eventual win.
Offensively, it was mostly a singles game. We had 12 hits in all, just three extra base ones. The aforementioned home run by Young, another home run by Hank Blalock, and a double by Saltamacchia were it for extra base jobbers. Elvus Andrus & Josh Hamilton both took ofers. Kinsler, Young, & Blalock each had two hits, everyone else had just a single hit. Expect Salty. He had a good night, going 3-4, and raising his average from like .180 to .239. His offense has struggled a lot, much in the same way that Gerald Laird’s did when he was finally told “the job is yours, don’t worry about your offense”. I hope Salty comes around, he seems to have the Blalock “wild, big swing and a miss” going on right now.
But was a nice comeback – hopefully we could sweep in Baltimore, we certainly need it.