I didn’t get a lot of time to listen to this one, as I was out and about running several errands. I was spending some time with my daughter, and I did have the game on the truck radio. She did ask me a few questions like “Daddy, what’s a foul ball”, and “What is such and such”.. That was cool, because she’s asking, this might be the year I get her to want to watch herself. Or at least teach her the game. She knows home runs, of course – because as we should all remember from 20 year old advertising.. Chicks dig the longball.
Anyway, this was another well pitched game on both sides. Tommy Hunter started for Texas, and looked good. Two innings, just one hit, and a couple of strikeouts. The first run was scored on his watch, but it was an unearned run. That was due to the rather sloppy play the Rangers had at points through the game. The other run KC got was later on when Willie Eyre was on the mound. That too was unearned, and was the direct result of 18 year old Leury Garcia.
Leury Garcia had quite the busy day, and was responsible for both runs scored in the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning. In the top of the inning, he threw a ball away from short, allowing a runner to reach, then just a batter or two later, he committed another error attempting to field a caught stealing throw. However, he made up for it in the bottom part of the frame by grounding in the only Rangers run. He was unusually busy for a guy who wore the number 98 on his back.
Overall, not much offense. Rangers had just five scattered hits – one was a double. The Royals too also had seven scattered hits. Of the 12 total, nobody had more than one.
However, the coolest thing to come out of today’s game was that the Rangers pitchers did not walk anyone. Early on in camp, that’s a fantastic thing to see. There’s a million reasons you can bring up to explain that. But despite all of them, it’s still QUITE cool to see a column of zeroes under BB in the box score. What’s even better than this is the fact that Ranger pitchers have walked just two batters ALL SPRING so far. Neftali Feliz walked one in Game 2, and Rich Harden walked one in the opener. All told, that’s 18 pitchers tossing a total of 26 innings over three games. Just two walks. Wow.
Love the fact that pitchers, early on, see to have great control. Wish we could have pulled this one out, but I’ll take all these little positives over a Spring Training victory at this point.