The Rangers got out to a lead on Sunday, and never looked back. Wasn’t a big lead early on (just 1-0 after one), but we never lost that lead after that. Was 2-0 after 3, 5-1 after 4, 6-1 after six, and 8-1 after eight. So the lead pretty consistently rose.
A large part of that was Matt Harrison who looked (well, sounded) quite good on the mound Sunday. He only pitched three innings, but from the sounds of it, he could have gone a lot more. Overall, it was 3IP, with 1 hit, 1 walk, and 36 pitches to 11 batters. Pretty decent line. If he can keep that up, it’ll be a good shot and making – AND HOLDING a slot in the rotation. He’s one of those guys who needs to get it together now, the years of being a young pitcher are past, he needs to get the job done, or he’ll fade pretty quickly from attention.
Tateyama followed, and gave up the run the Brewers did get. Three hits, and it could have been worse, had it not been for some nice D behind Tateyama. Yancy Brazoban did the best tightwalk rope impression. He walked the bases loaded, then didn’t allow anything to score. Bit surprised by that. The other bullpen appearances all went one inning, didn’t allow any runs, but all allowed at least one hit, except for Cody Eppley, who was perfect in his inning of work.
Offensively, we had 15 hits in all. Two doubles (Hamilton & German), two triples (Young and Hamilton), and a home run (Chris Davis). In fact, Chris Davis sounded extremely good. His line bears that out. 3-4 with a run scored, and three RBI’s.
Crush wasn’t the only one with 3 hits this game. Josh Hamilton & Michael Young also had three hits apiece. Young actually did crush one better in the RBI department. He had four. Between Davis (3) and Young (4), that accounted for 7 of the 8 runs the Rangers got right there. Listening on the radio, it just clicked. The offense sounded good. The pitching (well, most of it) was good too. Good game in general!
I even managed to make it all the way through scoring the game util they started changing like 6 and 7 guys in the lineup all at the same time. :)