We’ve had decent luck against Tampa Bay starter Scott Kazmir – or at least my memory tells me that. So I was kind of surprised when I watched this game and he was the Scott Kazmir that “Scott Kazmir” says Scott Kazmir should be. Not that one who was just an average pitcher.
Against Texas on Friday, Scott pretty much shut down the Rangers, holding us scoreless through seven plus innings. That was finally stopped when Taylor Teagarden hit a home run off of him in the 8th to lead off. That was followed up by RBI’s from Marlon Byrd & Andruw Jones. Jones’ RBI I don’t understand – I missed it live, in that his box score shows no hits, and no sac fly. Not sure how he was credited with his.
There wasn’t a lot of Rangers offense. Six hits in all, and three of them from Michael Young (2 1B, 1 2B). Byrd & Andrus singled, and there was the Teagarden home run. But when Kazmir was pitching like that, there wasn’t much to go around.
Dustin Nippert took the mound and pitched like a lot of Rangers pitchers in late August – “meh”. Five innings, seven hits, five runs (four earned) two walks, and three strikeouts. The pen was pretty good (nothing allowed), but the runs against Nippert were all that the Rays needed for the win.