WOW! I actually contemplated leaving my commentary at just WOW – but there was a few things to write about, although not much – the game can be boiled down to a few things:

1) Ranger pitching was spectacular. Joaquin Benoit pitched 6 innings, giving up ZERO runs on five hits, including one walk and 5 strikeouts. He had one or two places where he was in a jam, but got out of it very nicely. Jay Powell looked great, and while he technically got the win, it was deserved by Benoit. Jeff Nelson came in and pitched the ninth, and got his first ever save against the Mariners.

2) Freddy Garcia. This did not look like the hard throwing pitcher the Mariners usually trot out there wearing #34. This looked like the guy who normally wears #50 for the Mariners, Jamie Moyer. Garcia was soft tossing, throwing changeups, curves, and didn’t really look like a power pitcher. It pretty much baffled the Rangers until the 8th.

3) Hank Blalock. I’ve always liked this guy, but this year he feels a lot like a team leader, which is good. He gave us the winning run in the 8th with a home run (where has that happened before, Mr. Gagne). Man, that HR felt sweet. Big time sweet.

As much as I loved the win, I felt bad for Freddy Garcia. He pitched awesome as well, and while his line shows three runs earned, two of them came on a double given up by Julio Mateo to Kevin Mench.

It was a glorious game to watch. Going in I felt all kinds of bad things. Benoit pitching. Threat of rain. But we got no rain, we got a great pitcher, and a shutout at the Ballpark! Oh, the Rangers have two shutouts this season. We’re the only AL team to do that. ;)

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This one wasn’t terribly boring, that’s for sure. We had two rain delays (during which I played some baseball on my Xbox), we had 18 runs, 27 hits, 4 home runs, 9 pitching changes… you get the point. This wasn’t a 1-2-3 every inning, clean, crisp game. I wasn’t thrilled going into it. Ryan Drese has never been one of my favorite pitchers for the Rangers, but so far in 2004, he’s trying to change that. Coming into this game he had a really good line, and he didn’t do much to hurt it here. He went 5.2 innings, giving up 3 runs. I still can’t say I’m excited about seeing him pitch, but he hasn’t embarrassed himself out there, which I suppose is positive. It was our bullpen that couldn’t get the job done. The Eraser wasn’t bad, but after him (Almanzar, Mahay, & Nelson) all gave up some runs. Almanzar in particular had a bad outing, giving up 2 runs on 3 hits in .1 innings pitched. Not good for the ol’ ERA. Anyway, Cordero came in and got a four out save for his fifth of the season.

Offensively, David Dellucci hit a third home run in as many at bats, going back to yesterday’s game. Young, Blalock, & Soriano continued to tear it up at home, going 8 out of 15 with two doubles between the three of them, scoring 5 runs. The rest of the lineup chipped in with 7 more hits, including homers by Dellucci as was already said, plus Kevin Mench, who is starting to look more alive iwth the bat the last few games, which is good (and needed).

Thing is, as close and as wild as the game was, it didn’t feel to me like we were going to lose. It always felt like we were way out in front, even though we only lost by two. Still, it’s nice to be above .500, as well as having a better record than the Yankees. Hell, the TIGERS have a better record than the Yankees right now. :)

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Chan Ho Park didn’t have much – he still didn’t sound as awful as he was the last two years, but he was NOT great; that’s for sure. Ron Mahay was pretty decent, going 1.1 giving up just a hit and no runs. Jay Powell was really good, too including a fabulous sounding play in the bottom of the 8th getting an out on a ball hit off of him (well, except for the triple to Figgins). For the Angels, Ben Weber was great until he tried to go into his third inning, when he gave up a HR as well as a single, and then a botched fielding play by the Anaheim CF Figgins put a man on third.

Offensively we had a couple of home runs, but not much else. David Dellucci led the charge in that department with the first two run home run for a Ranger this season, and the first two home run game of Dellucci’s career (#28 & 29 of his career). The other home run we had was Laynce Nix back in the second, scoring EY as well – Dellucci’s were both solo shots. Dellucci also made a great diving catch in the field – it was definitely his day today, that’s for sure. Nix added on a third RBI in the 8th as well.

Hank Blalock made his first error of the season. I was listening on the radio, so I couldn’t see it, but given the way he’s played overall, one once in awhile isn’t too bad – but it directly led to a run.

The game ends with the Rangers losing by a score of 7-5 – they clawed back a bit at the end, but Park’s 6 runs were too much to overcome, as we got to Colon a little, but not much against the pen – what a surprise. We’re now 8-8 going into the series with Seattle, ending the streak of all AL West to start the season. Never like a loss, but overall, I like where we are.

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First off, if you look at the box score from my Palm, it’s going to show some really off stats. The reason for that is that I came home from my bowling league, and noticed that my TiVo was not properly recording the Rangers game, so when I started watching the score was already 3-1. I didn’t score the game as it happened, I went back after the game was over and scored it based on the results. So the pitch counts are WAY wrong, and the game time of 11 minutes was how long it took me to retroactively “score” the game. The only reason I did that and didn’t just let it slide is that I’m trying to keep the Ranger player stats in my Palm current with what they really are.

As I didn’t start watching the game till the score was 3-1, I pretty much missed all the good stuff. However, I did get to see the back end of RA Dickey’s pitching performance. Hopefully we can go forwards without seeing comments about him in the newspapers about the Rangers panicking. I mean, what’s the point of “committing to youth”, if you’re not going to let them take some lumps? That’s how the Twins got good, they let their pitchers get beat up for awhile until they learned. Anyway, RA was great, as was Jeff Nelson & Francisco Cordero behind him. All told, we gave up 6 hits, one run (all Dickey), as well as 9 strikeouts (7 by Dickey), and two walks (one by Dickey, one by Nelson). Was a great pitching performance, and it drove us to an over 500 record after 15 games (not something silly like 1-0 or 2-1).

Offensively we got a two run triple from Mike Young (who continues to show that I was right in drafting him in early rounds in my fantasy drafts this year). His night last night (2/4 with walk) gives him a batting average of 394. Not sure what his OBP is at the moment, but if you’re batting 394, it’s got to be in the neighborhood of 450 somewhere. That’s absolutely amazing. Soriano doesn’t seem to have the power numbers so far (only 1 HR and 8 RBI), but he is hitting (.328), plus he’s way ahead of Arod (.203/2HR/4RBI), so that’s gotta be fun. Also last night we got an RBI from Hank Blalock who seems to be hitting lefties just fine so far, and one from Adrian Gonzalez, his first as a major leaguer. Wish I would have seen the entire game, but from what I saw, it looked great!

A winning percentage of .533 on April 22nd is by no means the same as the same on August 29th, but you really have to feel good so far about this year’s team. Provided it doesn’t all end up on the DL. In doing today’s update, I see that Herbert Perry might go on the DL. Assuming he does, that means that at the moment we’ll have these players on the DL. Brian Shouse, Jeff Zimmerman, Brian Jordan, Mickey Callaway, Mark Teixeira, Colby Lewis, and then Herb Perry if he goes. There’s also Rusty Greer, but he’s not impacting this season (other than his $7 mil salary he’s getting for being hurt). Anyway, I know it won’t stay that way (Jordan probably will return this weekend, sending Nivar back to the minors), but it’s still a disturbingly high number of players on the DL all at once – 4 of them pitchers (two of our 5 man roster, too). The hitting has been great overall (suck on that Arod), and the pitching has generally been quite good (I believe we’re in the upper half of team ERA so far in the league). One has to like the season so far. Four straight years of last place makes me wait for the letdown – but it’d be nice if it didn’t come. Now if Tom Hicks would do something cool like make Chuck Morgan or Tom Grieve or hell – bring Tom Schieffer back to be the new president of the team – someone who cares about baseball, and isn’t interested in the “President’s Job” (or at least someone who doesn’t lie about answering all their emails on the stadium Jumbotron), I might be really happy. ;)

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No time. Too busy on Wed. Nice win, though. Kenny Rogers wasn’t terribly crisp.

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I was shocked. Ryan Drese pitched well. If he keeps this up, I might have to start liking him. He ran out of gas, and the bullpen let it down with a home run off the Eraser to give the M’s the win. Too bad, as Drese deserved a win. I actually am looking forward to his next start (which won’t be a problem, as Callaway is on the DL, and it looks like Colby Lewis is headed there). Oh well, there goes our great solid pitching staff out to injuries. :)

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After the first inning, I felt that we should have scored more against Jamie Moyer. He’s that pitcher who is really dominating for a long time. And I was right. After we scored one run in the first, that was it. No more runs for us, although we would have in another park. Three balls (Nix, Soriano, & someone else, I forget who) hit balls that died at the fence. That probably would have been enough to win if those had carried out. But we were shut down. That’s the story of this game.

Colby Lewis wasn’t exactly terrible, either. But he got burnt by walks. He’s had a walk problem in all his games so far this year, but has managed to get around them so far. In fact, he had gotten out of his first “walk jam”, but not the second. He walked two, and there was a bases clearing double which gave the Mariners their first three runs (the fourth was off reliever Ron Mahay). Other than the walks, I thought Lewis was good, if not great.

Rubber game is tomorrow afternoon with Ryan Drese pitching. That still scares me.

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Chan Ho Park pitched well last night. He wasn’t the greatest pitcher ever, he allowed more hits than innings pitched, and he seemed to be in jams all the time, but he had the pitches when he needed them. He had 5 strikeouts and three walks, and with zero earned runs over 7 innings, lowered his season ERA to 3.92. It might be dangerous to say, but he’s starting to look like the pitcher we thought we were getting when we signed him a couple of years ago. If he’s still doing this after say July, things will probably be really good. This was our first shutout of the season. I hope we deliver many more.

Offensively we kept up our pace, getting 5 runs in the first two innings, and a total of 11 hits over the nine innings total. We had two home runs, a couple of really impressive ones by Blalock & Nix. Blalock’s reminded me of the kind that Raffy would get all the time in Safeco. Mike Young went 0-5, but just about everyone else had a good night. Seattle’s pitching settled down after the first couple of innings, so the five in the first two frames were all we got.

We would have had three home runs, if it weren’t for the fact that Seattle has a spectacular right fielder. Ichiro robbed Herbert Perry of an opposite field HR with a most spectacular save. It wasn’t an out, as he brought the ball back, but it did save a HR. Ichiro later made a great diving catch in the same inning to keep Perry from scoring on someone else’s hit. He showed last night that his defensive reputation is well deserved.

We’re back over 500 at 6-5 against the Mariners who are now 2-8. I’d wager these records are what most people thought the teams would have for records. But in a different order. I’ll take it.

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