Seattle comes to town, and they seem to be in the same place we are. Bats aren’t working, the pitching is OK, but no offense. And for most of this game, it appeared this was going to be the same old story for the 2010 Rangers. Using the word “old” to describe a pattern in Game 4 is somewhat comical.
Anyway, Ranger fans know that so far, the offense has been Vlad Guerrero & Nelson Cruz, and that’s it. Everyone was was batting close to zero. If not actually zero. For the first five innings, it seemed it was going to be the same this game, too. Nelson Cruz had a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth inning, which at the time tied the game 1-1. That changed in the bottom of the sixth, when our play by play went like this:
Michael Young grounds out
Josh Hamilton walks.
Vlad Guerrero doubled to the 407 sign, scoring Hamilton from first.
Nelson Cruz singles, scoring Guerrero.
Chris Davis singles, moving Guerrero to second.
Pitching change: Shawn Kelley comes in
Taylor Teagarden strikes out
Joaquin Arias singles, scoring Nelson Cruz. Davis to second.
Elvis Andrus singles, scoring Davis. Arias to third.
Julio Borbon files out to Bradley.
That’s the most sustained offense we’ve had the entire season so far. It resulted in a four spot in the bottom of the sixth. Something that was needed. Josh Hamilton also doubled in Michael Young in the bottom of the seventh, so the game ended with a nice offensive output. Hopefully that breaks the ice, and things start happening, as there’s no way that Guerrero & Cruz could carry us like that on their own for too long.
Anyone else thinking AL Player of the week for either (or both) of them?
Even though that was a big deal, I felt the bigger deal was Colby Lewis. Lewis was the beneficiary of the offense, but he didn’t need all of it, as he pitched nearly as well as CJ Wilson did the other night. Lewis looked fantastic. Way better than I ever remembered him as a Ranger before. He went seven innings, gave up one earned run on five hits, and four walks. Few too many walks, which was the down side to his performance, but it didn’t seem to hurt him much at all. Tossed 103 pitches, which was probably partly due to the walks. But still, it was a great performance, and he deserved the win.
To finish up, I had started working on a golden sombrero image for Taylor Teagarden, who I thought struck out four times, but the box score says it was just three. I’ll save the image, but I do have something positive to say about Taylor. He threw out Ichiro Suzuki on an attempted steal. Made Ichiro look like he was was Bengie Molina slow he was out by so much. That was impressive.