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The Rangers returned to Arlington for the lone exhibition game at their home ballpark this year. They play again tomorrow, but that’s in Frisco.
This game started off with CJ Wilson on the starter’s mound, and he was fantastic. Looked really great. I have to confess I thought Wilson pining for a starter’s job was just a whining baseball player, but he seems to have pulled it off so far. Let’s hope it translates into the regular season. He only went five innings, but in those five, he only walked two. That’s it. No hits, no runs. Was fantastic. Struck out four. Only threw 61 pitches, too. I suspect his initial success might be a result of him being a closer, and not as many people are as used to him. Be curious to see how he holds up once the league adjusts to him.
In fact, the rest of the Rangers pitching did well, too. Darren Oliver had a perfect inning, Willie Eyre gave up the lone run the Royals scored in his one inning, and Dustin Nippert got a two inning save. Combined, the Rangers went 9 innings, allowed just two hits and one run (all Eyre). Hard to beat that.
Offensively, the Rangers didn’t do much, either. They scattered five hits, but one of them counted. David Murphy jacked a two run home run in the seventh inning to account for all the Ranger runs. Other than that, not much else happened. Couple of walks, and four singles. One of the singles was the patented Vlad Guerrero poke of a ball over the second baseman he has no business poking at in the first place. Hope to see a lot of those this year.
One more exhibition game on Saturday afternoon, and then it counts for real.

Taking a mulligan on this one. Busy week.

Taking a mulligan. Busy week.
However, I will add that Colby Lewis & Nelson Cruz continue to have a great spring, and that’s a good thing to see at the end of a bad spring record.

Taking a mulligan. Busy week.

The big story here is that Scott Feldman threw seven scoreless innings. This was his last start of the Cactus league, and it was a great one. Seven innings, six hits, one walk, two strikeouts, and a total of 89 pitches. His overall spring ERA is now 2.93. I picked him up in all four of my fantasy league drafts, not many people picked him up, which was a surprise. It was very cool he was named the home opener. A lot of people who write a lot better than me have written about this situation. I’ll just say it’s very very cool that he got the opening game nod. Especially as it’s at home this year. I really hope when he’s announced there’s an extra loud cheer for him.
Offensively, the Rangers finally broke their streak of innings without an extra base hit with a double by David Murphy in the fifth inning. But it was the only extra base hit, so it’s not like the floodgates opened. Other than the double, the Rangers had THIRTEEN singles. With all those hits, just five runs seems like a disappointment, especially when the White Sox only turned one double play.
But this game was about the pitching. Scott Feldman looked awesome, and Chris Ray and Frank Francisco didn’t give up anything either. This game bodes well for us pitching wise, but not the offense. Which seemed like the story of 2009.

Another loss in our pretty bad spring record streak on Saturday.
This was a well pitched game on both sides. Combined, both teams got 10 hits (four by Texas). Everything was a single, except for one. It was the only real mistake of the game, a home run ball thrown by CJ Wilson to Prince Fielder. That’s not that bad, really – Fielder can rake.
Even taking that into account, CJ qualified for a quality start. He went six innings, giving up four hits and two earned runs (the Fielder home run). Few too many walks (four), but he did strike out eight, which looked good. Was a great outing, and he seems to have seized the possibility of becoming a starter, as he was named to the rotation formally over the weekend. We’ll see how that works out long term.
Darren Oliver continues to look awesome, as his spring ERA remains at 0.00.
But the overall lack of wins and the general lack of offense is somewhat of a concern.

The last time we won was 9 days ago against the Brewers, when we won 6-4 over the Milwaukee Brewers. Remember that from days gone by?
Rich Harden started for us, and definitely did not pitch (again) like the guy we brought him in to be. 5.2 innings, 4 hits, FIVE WALKS, and three earned runs. His spring ERA is 9.17. That’s worse than Mark Clark ever was (about time I bring out Mark Clark’s name this year). This was probably his penultimate start of the spring, maybe one more after that, so he shouldn’t be messing around anymore. This was not promising, and I’m hoping I won’t see him on April 5th pitching like THIS!
Our pitching was made up today of guys who will (likely) actually make the club. The ones in the middle were pretty good. Doug Mathis went 1.1 innings & Chris Ray went one inning. Both allowed just one hit (Mathis one walk too), but no runs for either. Neftali Feliz finished up, and allowed a walk, two hits, and then three earned runs. Meh.
Offensively, the only thing the Rangers managed was just six singles. They were very scattered, so the six walks the A’s pitching surrendered definitely helped with our runs. Oddly enough, two of the singles were by minor league guy Wes Bankston.
The Rangers’ spring performances so far have been rather underwhelming to the point that I wasn’t interested in listening to this game on Friday afternoon. Kind of early on to feel that way, but this spring hasn’t been easy as a fan looking for wins.