Well, the Rangers were back on TV. That was really cool to see. I love watching the Rangers almost as much as I love going to the ballpark to see them in person. But I loved watching them on TV. As is tradition with my wife and I, the first game (used to be radio, but it’s now TV) of the season is a baseball dinner. We had hot dogs, sauerkraut, beans, & chips. It was great watching the team again. And this year I have a new sofa to enjoy it on. :)

Anyway, the game itself. I watched our team play pretty well. I thought Colby Lewis pitched better than his line indicated. He went 5 innings, giving up 8 hits, and three earned runs. Thing is, several of the hits he gave up were the cheap blooper kind. If those hadn’t happened, he would ahve had a great line. He made me feel good. Out of the pen, Ryan Drese had one good inning, then had not much else, giving up four earned runs in 3 innings, although really in two, as his first inning he only needed something like 7 pitches. Carlos Almanzar looked smoking out of the pen in the 9th, I say he’s in the pen to start the season, too.

Offensively, two of our three runs came from the longball. Mike Young had a solo home run, as did Hank Blalock. We were close on a few, and probably would have had more if Soriano wasn’t thrown out at third stealing. Overall, was a really nice feeling to watch the Rangers on TV. As I write this, it’s less than a week until the official start of the season, and 11 days till I’m back at the Ballpark for a game. :)

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Mickey Callaway and Doug Brocail were not very good. Between the two of them, they gave up 13 hits & 8 earned runs over the 6 combined innings they pitched. Joaquin Benoit pitched again, as a test to see how his endurance would be as a reliever pitching several days in a row. He gave up nothing in his one inning.

Offensively, we never really got a lot going. Our best performance was Herb Perry going 2 for 3. We only had four other hits the rest of the day, scattered amongst for other players. One of them was a home run by Jason Bourgeois.

Basically, not a very good game. :)

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Chan Ho Park turned in another performance that makes one think that he might be at least decent during the season instead of the steaming pile he’s been the last two years. But he did good last Spring Training, so I’m not terribly excited yet. His line was 6 innings, 3 earned runs – technically a “quality start”. He did also only allow three hits over six innings, but one of ’em was a two run home run. 3 walks though.

Joaquin Benoit continues to make a case for himself out of the bullpen. He did well there again, and I’m convinced he’ll start there.

Offensively, it was the game of the longball. Of the seven runs scored total, 5 of them were the result of a home run. Three of ours were solo home runs, including the game winner by Laynce Nix. Nice to see the home runs come a bit more regularly.

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An extremely well pitched game. I’m writing this just as the game is ending, so I don’t have a box score yet. But the only run of the game was a home run by former Ranger farmhand Scott Podsednik. Overall a great pitching performance by the Ranger staff, something we need to see more often. Kenny Rogers went 6.2 innings, giving up just the lone run of the game. Quite quite the good start.

Not a whole lot more to write about anyway, even if I did see a box score. We didn’t have any offense the mattered (meaning runs), and our pitching was damn good, giving up just one run over 8 innings. I’ll take that any day. We just need more runs. We could have borrowed two from the earlier game today, still won that, and won this game, too. ;)

We have now lost the spring series against the Brewers 4-0. We got swept by them this spring.

It was nice to hear Eric Nadel on the radio instead of the guys from mlb.com. :)

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This is game that was on the Internet, but it was broadcast by mlb.com’s team, not our guys. And I’ve got to say I don’t enjoy these ones broadcast by the national folks. The reason why is is more about generic baseball stuff, it’s things meant for an audience that doesn’t know either team – things like which pitchers are in camp with us, really quite frankly BORING things. Because of that, even though I had the game on, I was quite honestly bored by it. Plus I was at work, which never makes it easy for me to pay attention. So, having looked at the box score…. :)

Ricardo Rodriguez had a great start, going 5 innings, giving up just one run on six hits. A pretty good outing. However, the next two pitchers really stunk up the joint. Frankie Francisco gave up 4 earned runs in 1/3 of an inning. But not as bad as Shouse. He gave up 2 earned runs having gotten no one out. :eek: The remainder of our pitching 3 2/3 innings spread over Williams, Almanzar, & Clontz had no runs allowed. But the stink there in the middle almost doomed us.

We did win the game, led by Soriano, who homered twice. Laynce Nix also had a good day, going 3 for 5 with 2 RBI’s and 2 runs scored. EY also went 2 for 2, scoring twice. Rod Barajas was 2 for 5. Several others had good days. With 10 runs in and 12 hits, there’s a few to go around. Nice offensive output, but we can’t cover giving up 7 runs all the time.

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Glendon Rusch is looking like he’ll be the pick for the fifth starter spot (behind Rogers, Park, Dickey, & Lewis) with Benoit going to the bullpen. Yesterday he did pretty well again, except for Raul Ibanez, who killed him. The only thing that bothers me about that is that I thought we were supposed to be “going with the kids”, and then we play someone like Rusch. He may not be Kenny Rogers’ age, but he’s not anywhere near John Danks, either. :( Thing is, I don’t see him as a long term solution, so even if he does great this year, I don’t see him sticking around. Could be wrong, but my gut feeling says no. Joaquin Benoit continued to show that he’s likely to make the team as a reliever. Jay Powell wasn’t too bad, either (scary, I know).

Our offense was kind of scattered. We had three runs driven in by different people. Normally, spreading the wealth is a good thing, but when it’s just three, it doesn’t seem like a whole lot. Ramon Nivar, Chad Allen, & Manny Alexander had two hits each, the rest were all singles. None of those three I named are going to be on the roster April 5th, so the guys who did play that “mattered” for the opening day 25 didn’t do much. Oh well.

Overall a loss is a loss, but it wasn’t as bad as some of the 16-3 fiascos I’ve seen the club give up the last few years.

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Not available – no time to write commentary.

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