This is a game we lost, but outhit our opponent. Whenever that happens, I always see it as a game of missed opportunities. Due to work and family stuff, I didn’t see or hear any of this game, so I’m saying this before looking at the recap or the box scores. Taking a quick look at the box score, I see we left nine men on base. Yeah, that kind of number kind of proves “missed opportunities”.
My new favorite Ranger young starter took the hill – Nick Tepesch, and he had a rookie outing. Not an atrocious outing, but not one that could be called “good” by any stretch. He went 6.2 innings, allowed eight hits, walked two, and five earned runs. Although, it would appear from looking over the game stats that he pretty much ran out of gas in the seventh. He exited after 109 pitches, which isn’t outrageous in the seventh inning. But three of the five runs he gave up came in the seventh. The 7th started off with a solo home run (Gillaspie), and then after a single, Alejandro De Aza had the other home run of the inning. Before the seventh, Tepesch put up goose eggs in innings 3-6. So if he had held it together a bit more in the 7th, he might have gotten a better line.
Jason Frasor followed Tepesch, doing better than he has done lately. While his ERA is only 2.35 – it feels like it should be a lot higher than that. Frasor only pitched to four batters, got ’em all out, striking out two of them.
My man, Smokin’ Joe Ortiz followed, and lived up to the nickname I coined for him. I’m quite honored to say that Eric Nadel himself liked the nickname, and has been using it on the air. Quite the ego stroke for sure, but that’s not why I did it. I genuinely thought the nickname fit. But anyway, he was perfect in his inning of work. No strikeouts, but no hits or walks (or runs), either. So that’s all good.
However, our offense couldn’t pick it up. Only got two runs, and both of them came in the second inning. Jeff Baker (another seemingly excellent choice for the bench this year) had a solo home run. We actually loaded the bases after that, and had a shot at a huge inning, but only managed to score one more run (a Kinsler RBI single). I think part of the reason the offense sputtered is that it was bunched together a lot. Of the nine hits we had total, Ian Kinsler had three of them, and Lance Berkman had two. That’s 5 of the 9 by just two guys. Plus all of them were singles outside of the Baker home run (which was a solo shot).
One bonus, Nick Tepesch got what I believe to be his first major league pickoff. That was Alex Rios at first. Always like a good pickoff.
So, while we dropped this game, we’re still in first place on the first of May. 17-10 (.630), and 2 games up on second place Oakland. We’re tied with the Yankees for second best record in the AL (behind Boston).
Also, the Houston Astros are now tied with the Miami Marlins for the worst record in baseball – both are at 8-20. Are they eliminated yet?
