I’ll make this short, because walkoff losses annoy me.   My daughter was annoyed at this loss.  She was bummed out.  My daughter is starting to get old enough to be bummed when her team loses.   I’m raising a baseball fan, I think.  :)

Robert Ross looked great!  He’s doing quite well this spring, and my gut says he’s a realistic shot to make the team.  Two innings, one hit, one walk, struck out two.  Kept Pujols at bay.   I really liked him.

THe rest of the game, especially Michael Kirkman – not so much.

Grumble Grumble.

There’s a lot of stuff I could write about this game, but the only thing I really WANT to say is this.

Joe Nathan better get better in a bloody hurry.  He’ starting to legitimately scare me.  When latter Darren O’Day gives me more confidence, that’s not a good thing.

This was a game that I got to watch on TV.  I sat down with my iPad to score the game, grabbed a beer, I was ready to enjoy this.  And then I fell asleep on the sofa.  I was wiped for some reason.  It wasn’t super late, started at 8PM, but due to family concerns, I had to wait till around 10PM to start it, so I couldn’t make it through the whole game.  What I did see though was a great pitching matchup.

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Another game I didn’t see, but again, another loss.  Too many this spring.  This one came to the Reds (who used to be in Florida during March until recently).   Odd thing about this game is that there was really only one part of it I’d call “awful”.

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Colby Lewis did this game what he did a few too many times in 2011.  Gave up home runs.  If I remember right, Lewis lead the AL in home runs allowed last year, and in this game he gave up two of them in his 5 innings of work.  Also allowed a walk and NINE hits.  A dangerous combination.   As it was, he gave up six earned runs with that combination, and it was a pretty ugly outing.   Not what you want to see coming into the final stretch of spring.  Bah.

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Neftali Feliz started this game, and after his past outings, I think several Ranger fans (myself included) were watching this kind of expecting a bad outing, and leading to a big round of “can he really do this”?   Well, he answered that with a great outing.  Went three innings, allowed just two hits and a walk, punching out two.  No runs being the biggest stat.  But he came out after just three innings.  That was not intentional, he was taken out for precautionary reasons.   Later on it was said it was due to right shoulder stiffness.  That’s one of those generic injuries that can be nothing, or a mask for something huge.  I don’t think anyone likes seeing a player come out, but one that had something to prove like Neftali..  I bet he wasn’t interested in coming out of the game, either.  We’ll see what happens with him over the next week or so, but it would be fairly annoying if he had to go on the DL.  The obvious answer to that is Ogando in the rotation, and someone new in the pen.   But we don’t want to “Joba” Ogando, either, so it might be best to pick one and leave him there.

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Well, it was another game affected by the presence of #11 on the mound.  This game was not originally scheduled to be broadcast.  However, since Darvish was toeing the hill, it was added on.  Before I get into anything about this game, given it was a last minute, apparently the broadcasters were last minute, too.  This had what I consider to be the dream team.  We had Eric Nadel on play by play, and Tom Grieve on color.  If it were up to me, THIS would be the broadcast team for BOTH radio and TV.  Do what some other teams do – don’t have separate broadcaster teams.  That’s unlikely to happen though, given Nadel’s lack of desire to be on TV.  Oh well.  At least I got to see it for a few innings anyway.    That was before I got bored with the game and started tweeting people’s phone numbers.  ;)

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Got to see this game – I’m getting spoiled. hahaha.  Seriously, though, it was nice seeing the Rangers on TV, and it was even better seeing an outing like that from Matt Harrison.  Matt’s one of those guys you always hoped would work out, but at least for me, I never thought it was a lock he would.  I want him to succeed.  I would love nothing better than for it to work, if for no other reason than to make the Saltamacchia trade with the Braves look that much better.

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Well, it was technically “cancelled”, not rained out.  Rained out implies it will be made up.  This won’t.  It wasn’t official yet, so none of the activities count in spring training records.  Shame, though as David Murphy & Brad Hawpe hit home runs before the game was wiped out.

Hey, a game I finally got to see!

I was looking around on mlb.tv early this afternoon, and noticed that the Rangers game was actually viewable there.  I know they don’t black out anything during Spring Training, but I still didn’t know the game was on anyway, so it was quite the nice surprise to see it there.  I started late, but I did watch the game.  Broke out the iPad, and scored my first game of 2012.  As is my usual policy on Spring Training Games, I’ll keep up with all the changes the best I can.  For the Rangers I try a bit harder.  For the opponent, I’ll do it if it’s an easy/obvious change.  More often than not, double switches aren’t even mentioned in coverage.  Especially if they’re made during the time some executive is plopped in the booth to yammer on about stuff we don’t care about (like how many hotel rooms there are in Las Vegas, or why a certain kind of treat was taken off the Dairy Queen menu).  Both of those happened this game.  But I don’t want to get into a full fledged rant.  Just to say that for the other team, I’ll keep track of the pitcher, but mostly I leave their starting lineup intact through the end of the game.  Works much easier.

Anyway, about the game..

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