Coming to the game, I was thinking two things:

1. The Indians had already lost today, so we could go ahead and win this game.
2. This was going to be an awesome pitching performance, with Radke & Rogers on the hill.

I wasn’t disappointed. I was at the ballpark for this game, and it was awesome! In the first inning, Pudge jacked a home run off of Brad Radke, and I felt the game would go in our favor early. However, Radke turned it up a notch, not allowing virtually anything for quite some time after that. We gave up two unearned runs in the top half of the second, giving back the lead we quickly got. However, Radke walked two (a shocker) in the fifth, allowing an eventual sac fly to tie the game. It stayed at 2-2 into the 10th.
Radke & Rogers both battled, and stayed out there for quite awhile. However, our pitching was better in the pen. Juan Moreno came on, and was virtually perfect. He struck out four in a row over 2.1 innings, allowing nothing. Zim came in and pitched the rest of the 9th and the 10th, and allowed just one hit, but looked like ’99 Zim.
That set the stage for the hero of the game, El Caballo. In the bottom of the 10th, we worked the bases full, and Sierra stepped up, hit a deep ball to right field, and it wasn’t caught, allowing the winning run to score. It was a great feeling, winning late, winning after coming back and against the first place team’s best pitcher.
A great game, and I was glad I was there to see it!

Well, the Twins come in to town. And the result from Game 1 is no surprise. Actually, I was hoping we’d lose all three games, because of a couple of reasons.

1. We’re not going to win anything this year, so a couple more against the Twins won’t matter.
2. I don’t want to help the Cleveland Indians.

I really figured we’d lose, and quite frankly, it’s an odd feeling rooting against your own team. It was another typical Ranger loss. We handed it away early, and lost the game. :(

I’m getting tired of writing about losing already. I didn’t get that way last year until April. Ugh. Don’t feel like writing about losing to a team that we should have kicked the crap out of.

Well, so much for Pat Mahomes in the starting rotation. I suspect he’ll be back to the pen. I didn’t believe the bit where he was effective in the pen, but really shaky in the rotation. I believe it now. Given how bad the pitching is this year, I suspect he’ll get another shot in the rotation, but he doesn’t look like he belongs there right now.
Other than that, all I have to say about this game is – YUCK! I turned it off after the first inning. ;)

It was nice to see Raffy get two home runs again – he looked much more like himself this game. The two home runs were typical Raffy home runs. Big, majestic, over the right field wall, and you could tell it immediately.
KC started Mac Suzuki, the pitcher who pitched in the Kingdome a couple of years ago for the Mariners and gave up 9 RBI to Pudge; I was hoping for a repeat, but Mac got tossed quickly. Oh well.
Interesting event; a power failure that caused about half the lights in the ballpark to go out, delaying the game for about half an hour. It looked funny on TV, I wonder what it was like there.
Overall a pretty damn good game, Rick Helling looks like he’s figured it out, now with three strong outings in a row.