The Rangers played two games today.  This one is the one that I didn’t hear or see anything about.  Generally you don’t get to “witness” both split squad games, one of them is the odd man out.  This was the odd man out game.

This game had decent pitching at the start, and at the end.  But the middle three innings..  not so much.  Scott Feldman started this one, and went into the fifth inning.   From the looks of things, he was pretty decent early on.  But he ran out of gas when he got into the fifth.  He allowed a single run in the fourth, not a big deal, but ended up with five earned runs on his ledger.   Wasn’t 100% his fault, Uehara allowed one of those runs to score.   Not that Koji did much better.

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Darnit.  I’m annoyed already.  Come on guys.  Get with it.   I think I’ll post these pictures of Travis Hafner, Esteban Yan, Mark Petkovsek, and our patron saint, Mark Clark as Rangers for no good reason.   It’s more interesting than these losses this week!

Ian Kinsler had a home run.

It’s a bit too early in the season for me to be getting disgusted about writing about losses.

That is all.

Well, the Rangers win loss record isn’t so hot this spring.  Normally I don’t get worried about spring records, but darnit.  We’re two time defending AL Champs.  We shouldn’t have that kind of crappy record in the spring.  Even though they don’t count.  I wanted to see ’em turn it in in March and carry through October.  Not piss around in Spring Training with a record like THIS.

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Well, I tuned in to watch Yu Darvish pitch.  Got to see some of the game through mlb.tv as they don’t black anything out during Spring Training.  :)   Yu Darvish was quite wild.  Definitely didn’t pitch like anything worth writing about, but I’ll say something.

His full line is a weird mix.  Three innings pitched, just three hits, but four walks.  Allowed two earned runs.  Struck out three.  There were moments where he was as advertised.  Then there were moments when he was the second coming of Chan Ho Park.   Two of his walks came in the first inning.  Both times though he was saved by Torrealba who threw them both out on caught stealings.  Had that not happened, things probably would have been a whole lot worse.  Second inning had kind of the same thing, as the defense turned a double play behind him.   Darvish had this to say after the game:

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I’m not saying much about this game.  For a couple of reasons.

1. It was a no radio, no TV, no webcast game.  Boxscore only.  Those are hard for me to pay any kind of attention to, and I do better with commentary when I can pay attention to the game.
2. The reason I wasn’t paying attention was because I was busy putting together a toddler bed, and rearranging my son’s room when the game was on.  Last night was the first night my son slept in anything other than his crib.

So I was a bit occupied.

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Derek Holland has been making a lot of noise this spring so far that the goofy side of him is not his dominant side, and that he works rather hard on his pitching side.  He wants to downplay the goofiness (but I hope not eliminate it, as that made him more fun).  This outing shows that he is handling the pitching side quite well.   This game he started and went three innings.    Allowed just three hits and a single run, while striking out four.   More strikeouts than innings is ALWAYS a good thing.

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Colby Lewis is now the “ace” of the staff.  Someone has to be the #1 pitcher, right?  Today he pitched like he owned the job, and wasn’t just given it by default.

Colby went four innings (for Mar 10th, a long outing), and just dominated.  No hits, no walks, and five strikeouts.   No idea how many pitches he threw (wasn’t in the box score).  But everything I’ve read says it was a shutdown outing.   Hard to argue with the numbers in the box score.

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There’s not much to say about this one. The Rangers lost nine to nothing, and we’re never really in it at all.

I think I’ll give this one a pass. Not much positive to say about this one.   In fact, I pretty much stopped paying attention to it once I saw this on my iPhone:

This game brings us to a recent vintage path in spring training; one that has been previously traveled by C.J. Wilson & Alexi Ogando.  Neftali Feliz’s first start of the spring.  I didn’t get to see any of it, as I was occupied with some matters about my son at the time.   Looking back at it, I certainly didn’t miss a lot.  Feliz was rocked in the first inning.   Actually, it wasn’t that prolonged of a pain.    There was a five pitch single to Brent Morel, there was a three pitch double to Dayan Viciedo, and finally the three run home run to Adam Dunn, which was described as a “titanic” shot.   Feliz was down 3-0 after a 13 pitch span there.

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