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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Not available – no time to write commentary.

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I didn’t get to hear the start of this game, I came in right as Chan Ho Park was coming out. From the looks of the reports here, I didn’t miss much. While he didn’t give up 618 runs, he did give up 4 earned runs (5 total), which wasn’t stellar, it’s an ERA around 9 or so. Chan Ho also had a wild pitch and a hit batter. Not a whole lot positive to say here. The rest of our pitching (Almanzar, Nelson, Shouse, Mahay) was pretty good, going 4 innings giving up 3 hits and one run. All told, we had 10 strikeouts (5 by Park, 5 by everyone else). K’s are good sign.

Offensively something happened that hadn’t happened yet this spring. Home runs. We had four of them, which is the most we’ve had in a game so far. The HR probably won’t be as prevalent as it used to be in our offense this year. Chicks aren’t the only ones who dig long balls. Other highlights were Soriano’s hitting streak getting to 13 games. Mike Young has a .382 on base percentage for the spring batting leadoff.

It was a see-saw game until we finally took the lead for good in the eighth with a solo shot by Jason Conti. Was kind of surprised that Cordero didn’t come in for the save.

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