Who would have thunk it? Certainly not me the way I was ragging on Padilla earlier on Wednesday. I don’t think most Ranger fans were really frothing at the mouth at the chance of seeing #44 pitch again. I sat down last night to watch the game, and bam – bam – bam. Padilla struck out the side in the first inning. That was very unexpected. And then something else happened. I fell asleep on the sofa.
Next thing I knew, I woke up right before Michael Young’s double in the sixth, so I missed most of Padilla’s performance. But the first inning was quite good. In all, Padilla went five innings, giving up just four hits and EIGHT strikeouts – wow. There were 15 outs while he was the pitcher, and he struck out eight of them. That was a very nice number. He did give up one unearned run. This was quite the performance. I understand five innings and 80 pitches on first start back from the DL, I’m sure that’s the reason he came out when he did.
CJ Wilson had his first shaky save – although not really his fault. There was a throwing error by Gerald Laird in the ninth, as well as a ball that just ate up Michael Young. Took a wicked hop, and went over his head, but knocked him on his backside at the same time – you don’t often see that, no matter who the fielder is. Two runs did score in the ninth, only one earned. We were helped out by a double play to end the game.
Some nice defense as two Royals were thrown out at the plate, one by Nelson Cruz, one by Marlon Byrd.
Offensively we were led by a two run double by Michael Young, and a solo home run by Ian Kinsler – Kinsler’s home run ended up being the difference, as it was the fourth and final run we got.
Nice win, wish I wasn’t unconscious for most of it. :)

I have to admit, the Rangers game took a backseat this evening. Today was the release of “Madden 08”, and once Samantha went to bed, that was what I was doing – playing football on my Xbox 360. I did check in from time to time, and it was nice to see this line for Kevin Millwood.
Seven innings, four hits, thee runs (only one earned), one walk, and nine strikeouts. A very nice line.
Benoit got into a little trouble with allowing two walks in his 0.2 innings, but CJ Wilson came in and shut things down nicely. This is the way it was supposed to work, except with different people at the back end of the bullpen.
I probably should have watched the game, but I was busy playing football. :)

Going to try a slightly different report..
Three doubles for David Murphy – good.
Kason Gabbard leaves the game early with an injury – BAD
Michael Young home run – exciting
Nice double play by Saltamacchia – cool
Seven different Rangers with RBI’s – nice
Series win – the best part.

I was at this game. I will say this for it. It was a very fast moving game. Done in two hours fourteen minutes. The reason for that was Edwin Jackson. The Tampa Bay starter was frickin fantastic – throwing a complete game four hit shutout. It’s odd as Jackson was something like 2-11 with an ERA of 6.50 coming into this game, and then he does that. Granted, he’s one of those pitchers we’ve seen wear the Ranger uniform with a ton of promise, and no delivery on said promise. Every once in awhile those guys will uncork a real gem; it was a shame it was against us.
The reason I was at this game was the Rusty Greer ceremonies. And as has been mentioned elsewhere, Nelson Cruz did a great Greer impression with two all out dives in right field mimicking the former red haired left fielder who manned this park for many a year. It was a nice touch.
John Rheinecker took the hill for the Rangers, and didn’t pitch bad. Six innings, three earned runs, six strikeouts, and one walk. He was beat out by Jackson, that’s for sure – it’s the only way to explain that. Jamey Wright and AJ Murray followed up, not allowing any more runs, but just the first one was enough the way Jackson was pitching. :)

This game was really powered by Frank Catalanotto’s five RBI night. Three of them came on a home run that just barely cleared the wall in the right field corner, and the other two on a single. It was a productive night for Cat. Speaking of his nickname, “Little Cat”, he got that (I think) because of Andres Galarraga being on our team at the time having the name “Cat”, so Frank got little Cat. Does he really still need to be called that? :)
Michael Young contriubted as well with the other two Ranger RBI’s. They both came on a third inning double by Mike, scoring Vazquez and Kinsler.
We had just seven hits, and scored seven runs. That’s always efficient. :)
Pitching wise, Brandon McCarthy was pretty decent. He threw only 4.2 innings, his biggest problem was again pitch count. Didn’t get out of the fifth inning, and he was at 102 pitches. That’s not good. On the other hand, he didn’t give up any earned runs, either. There were three unearned runs, but those were quite clearly a fielder’s error, so if you take those out, the earned runs were good. Pitch count was most definitely not.
CJ Wilson got his fourth save, and when he comes out, you get that “gut feeling” that he’s a closer. Just seems to have “it”. We shall see what happens when Aki comes back.