This is good old classic Texas Rangers baseball. Much has been made of the 2009 edition being built on the classic baseball axiom of “pitching and defense”. That much is true, our pitching and defense is improved this year. But Friday night’s win was pretty much the old fashioned way of doing it. We homered our way to the win.
It’s ironic that we win where 100% of our runs were accounted for by home runs on the day that Nelson Cruz was added to the All-Star roster (replacing injured Torii Hunter), and the night we heard that Cruz was going to participate in the home run derby.
It got started in the second inning when Hank Blalock hit a ball way out over the right center field fence. You kind of saw Ichiro making a half hearted jog in the general direction, so you knew it was gone before the ball was seen on TV.
The next inning was a three run shot by Michael Young. This was an opposite field job, which Ichiro came within inches of making a spectacular steal of the home run ball, but it landed a mere inches past his glove. This home run gave us the lead back – we were down 2-1 at that point. Nice for Young to get some numbers going again. He’s got 106 hits at the moment just slightly past the halfway point. As long as he stays on the field, 200 shouldn’t be a problem again.
The third and final home run was by Nelson Cruz. It was a titanic shot into the upper tank in left field. It was WAY up there – you don’t normally see home runs hit up there. Perhaps Seattle fans do as they see more games in that park than we do, but I can only recall a shot by Arod going up there awhile back. But it was an absolute no doubter of a shot, even Nelson stood there and watched for a bit.
Scott Feldman started the game, and had a pretty good outing. Six and two thirds innings giving up seven hits, one walk, and just two earned runs. Not a bad outing. Derek Holland followed up on him, and technically allowed two earned runs, but htey scored on a hit off of Jason Jennings. Shame.
Frank Francisco came in and pitched a scoreless inning of relief to get his fifteenth save of the season.
Overall, a nice win. Hopefully we can win out in Seattle and go into the break on a strong note. We remain a half game ahead of Anaheim for the division lead, and Seattle is now 4.5 games back.