This is one of those games that annoyed me to lose. Mostly because I had it in my head that we SHOULD win this one. The Indians are struggling right now even more than we are, and we always seem to beat up on Chuck Finley – plus Doug Davis has pitched pretty well overall this season. That combination in my head told me that we should win this game.
We didn’t.
Davis struggled pretty good, and never seemed to get it going at all. We were down 4-1 after three (3-1 after 2), and never recovered. We had a few threats here and there, but it never seemed that we were in this game at all to me (I’m saying this writing the commentary on Monday for a Friday game). Davis gave up three home runs (never good), and we had none. Arod is stuck on 249 home runs for his career, I wonder if he’s thinking about 250 too much, although he did go 2-4 tonight. Gabe Kapler also went 2-4.
Overall a pretty “blah” game.

I had gone to the first game of this series, and they lost. I had tickets to last night’s game, but couldn’t use ’em and gave ’em to a friend. They won. I figured that clinched it – they’d lose game 3. And after going down 6-0, I was pretty convinced of it.

This game can be called Mike Lamb’s (not so) Excellent Adventure!

Mike Lamb actually got booed in the game – although I think it was more of a byproduct of the Rangers season than Lamb’s performance in this game as such. I felt bad for him back there – he really never got it together with Burba – he should probably be learning this at AAA, but we don’t have much choice at the moment, unfortunately. My wife even got mad with the booing and stood up and screamed “Give the kid a break!” :)

What a game – Lamb’s passed ball, the three wild pitches allowing a bunch of runs to score, Lamb’s general ineffectiveness behind the plate (they also stole two or three bases on him), plus other fun like 5 pitchers in an inning, John Rocker (any time he’s there it’s nothing if not interesting), Todd Van Poppel’s trip off the front of the mound, and 5 consecutive hits capped with a home run as part of a 7 spot 5th inning.. Definitely a fun game to watch. Our offense finally woke up, let’s see if we can carry it over to the Cleveland series.We ended up winning a game we probably didn’t deserve to and won our second series of the year, and only the second time we’ve won two games in a row – but then when you’ve won only 7 anyway, that’s not all THAT surprising. A nice day out at the ballpark for the game, too. Was cloudy and a bit chilly, but afternoon baseball is always cool. I’m just lucky that I have a flexible job where I can go see these.

The Topes Win! The Topes Win! (Simpsons reference for the uninformed).
While I will always take a win, I have to be concerned that we only scored 3 to do it. Kenny Rogers continued his awesome start to the season, and overall, it was a well pitched game. I’m really starting to like Calvin Murray – even if he reminds me a lot of Tom Goodwin. Skinny dude, fast, doesn’t hit a lot.
Our relief pitching was pretty good, too. Rudy Seanez allowed nothing, as did Hideki Irabu for a save. Toronto’s pitching was pretty good too – our runs came in the first three innings, and then we couldn’t get anything else the rest of the game – good thing we didn’t need it.

I’m really getting tired of writing about losses. 14 of them already, and we’re 11 back. I didn’t think we could get off to a worse start than last year.
Big shakeup to the roster yesterday. Biggest problem is the Rocker situation. I was a Rocker fan, but his refusal to accept his minor league assignment and the subsequent allowing of him to come back without going down is a bad precedent. I really hope now he doesn’t do well, so we can just dump him. I was a Rocker fan, but not anymore. And speaking of that – Twisted Sister had decreed that Rocker is not to use the “I Wanna Rock” song as an intro to him. I wonder if the Rangers know that. Or Twisted Sister for that matter.
Anyway, as was said on the post game show, I didn’t think this lineup was the kind where we’d be tipping our hats to the other pitcher. What was it – 4 or 5 hits? 1 run? Yeesh. We need some offense back! Help!
A cute note – we now have more salary on the disabled list than a few teams do in total salary (Pirates, Expos, Twins, I think).

DAMMIT! That’s about all I can think of to say as I sit here to write this!
Game notes are available here.

Sigh. Even given all that went wrong, I felt we had a chance to come back and win this until we brought in Dan Miceli. I even agreed with Narron’s move on walking Ichiro. I did NOT agree with the choice of Miceli. The next time it comes time to drop someone, I hope he’s first out the door. Sigh.

What a beautiful game. I admit going into this game, I was feeling distressed. After the slaughter we got from Seattle in the last series with them, the prospect of losing against them again (we could have conceivably been 11.5 games out after this series) didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence. Kenny Rogers, however – had a lot of confidence.
And a lot of pitches. He was brilliant, throwing a 5 hit shutout against the best hitting team in the AL, the Mariners. There were a few double plays turned behind him, and a big night from Raffy (1 HR, 4 RBI, 1 Double). In fact, Raffy got his 450th home run, as well as his 499th career double. In fact, Raffy leads all the majors with I believe 11 doubles this year.
Mike Young also jacked a home run, and had a good day. Mike Lamb had a double, and Arod had a couple of RBI’s too. A nice game, nice to see a big win. However, we have to take all three in Seattle, really. Two out of 3 would be nice, but all 3 would put us 5.5 games out when we get out of the AL West, which isn’t all that bad, really.

No time to write commentary on this game today – too busy at work. Was nice to see a win, though.

This was totally disheartening. I really was sad after this game, and I generally don’t get that swept up in my emotions (for real) – it is after all just a game. But I really was depressed after this game. Then I went and lost a game of baseball on my Xbox, too. :(
Anyway, Kevin Mench was the story of this game, after the good pitching performance by Doug Davis. It was amusing that Kevin Mench managed to trip over his own bat out of the batter’s box – I had never seen that in 25+ years of watching baseball. :)
When I got up in the morning, I saw that John Rocker had been sent down. He deserved it, but quite frankly, I wish he pitched better, as I enjoyed watching Rocker on the mound. I hope he gets it together (although he should have done that in spring training).

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! I was at the game, too. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH! The best part of the game was Mench, Arod’s home run, and a baseball toss between James Baldwin and the home plate umpire (they had three balls going at once, and the umpire threw a ball into short center field – was pretty funny). Other than that, check out this line from our pitching.

TEXAS                        ip       h   r  er  bb  so  hr    era
D Burba                       5       7   6   6   1   6   2   6.89
C Lewis (B, 1)                1 1/3   4   4   4   4   1   0   7.36
C Michalak                      1/3   0   0   0   1   0   0   6.75
T Van Poppel                  1 1/3   1   0   0   0   2   0   7.50
J Rocker                      1       1   1   0   1   0   0   6.75
D Miceli (L, 0-2)             1       2   2   2   2   1   0  11.11

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!
What does a Rangers fan do after a sweep by the Mariners? He has to wear this “gift” given to him from some friends in Seattle. I tried to look excited doing it.

Additional game notes are available here.