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Last time Derek Holland pitched this way, I saw Hannah Baugh squeee herself into a fit of excitement. If Holland does too many more of these, poor Ms. Hannah might have her head explode! And then Derek will feel bad.
Seriously, most Ranger fans don’t know what to do with repeated awesome pitching like that. I mean this was fantastic. I was talking to my wife about it when it was happening, and found myself referring to his stuff as “Nolan Ryan like”. It was impressive, to be sure. His total line:
Nine inning complete game
Just 96 pitches
Three hits (all singles)
One walk
Eight strikeouts
It was fantastic to watch. I mean WOW. When I watch games in a hurry, I normally fast forward through the Rangers in the field to get to them batting. This time it was not that way, I wanted to watch the pitching.
I think I can stop saying things like “Derek Holland on paper won’t beat John Lackey”, because now we feel he can beat him. I’m not going to act shocked in my commentaries when that happens!
Not that Holland needed the help, but he definitely was helped out by the Angels in the field. They had three official errors, and at least one more that should have been. Here’s a summary of their gaffes:

• On an infield hit by Blalock, John Lackey & Robb Quinlan got caught up going to cover first, and neither got there, and Blalock got an infield hit.
• In the same inning, Bobby Abreu muffed a simple catch in right, which directly led to two runs scoring.
• There was a catcher inference call against Anaheim.
• A ball in center was misplayed by Gary Matthews Jr for a double
• A throwing error on a Pedro Borbon stolen base

Shutting out the Angels 7-0 and also by the score of 11-6 (with four in the first inning) is a statement, I think. It’s nice to go there and win 2-3. If we could just beat some other team this reguarly. :)
For some reason I don’t even feel like getting into the Rangers offense this game. We scored seven, had a few home runs. We’ve sen that before. We haven’t seen this kind of regular pitching from a Ranger guy in recent memory. It’s exciting!
Squeee indeed, Hannah!

I wasn’t able to see any of this game, although I did hear the Rangers scoring on the radio when I was driving around. Took a trip with the wife and kids to a restaurant we had never been to before. Was good, but not really worth the time and drive.
The Rangers still have a problem with Jered Weaver. In the past he’s shut us down a lot, and this game was no different. In fact, other than the fifth inning, we weren’t able to do much of anything.
The fifth had a two run home run by Hank Blalock, which accounted for all our scoring. There wasn’t a ton of hitting, either. Six hits in all, spead out over four Rangers. Weaver went into the eighth inning, throwing 100 pitches, five hits, the two runs, and eleven strikeouts. Millwood wasn’t bad, either – 6 innings, also only two runs. He had a few too many hits (nine), but they didn’t seem to affect him too much.
Eddie Guardado followed, and gave up just one hit, but it was a big one – the game winning home run to Erick Aybar. Sigh.
I’ll say this again about the Angels. When you lose to them, at least you don’t have to see the stupid rally monkey.

After a day in which the Rangers cut loose one of their bigger “name” starting pitchers for what essentially amounts to him being an ass, we took the field in Anaheim.
We came in four and a half games out of first place. Which isn’t insurmountable, but when we were in first place by about five not all that long ago, you got a bad feeling. We played pretty awful against Oakland, despite winning the last game before coming to Anaheim. So you kind of got that feeling of dread that we were going to lose the series and come out seven games out or something.
So it was quite a nice feeling when we went up 4-0 in the first inning. Josh & Tom were talking about Josh Hamilton saying he was coming off his ADD medicine that he believed it was impacting his play on the field. And of course, while they were talking about that, Josh hit a three run home run to right field. That set the tone for the game. Despite the Angels scoring six runs, and only losing by five, four of their runs didn’t come until the seventh inning. We pretty much dominated the game. Four runs in the first, a single run in the second and third, and three more in the fifth put us up 9-1. We tacked on additional singles in the 8th and 9th.
Most of this came via the longball. In all, we had five home runs. Hank Blalock also had a solo home run in the first too. Then came the fifth. We had three home runs in the fifth – two of them back to back. Taylor Teagarden was first, then Omar Vizquel and Michael Young went back to back. Omar’s was his first as a Ranger, and his first since something like September of 2007. He was probably helped by that tiny wall by the right field foul pole in Anaheim. Funny video of him doing the arm muscle flex in the dugout afterwards. Enjoyed that. A lot.
That wasn’t all for Omar Vizquel. He went 4-6 and had some great D in the field. The more I watch him, the more I start to get a grasp of what he must have been like in his prime in Cleveland. Wow. I’d like to keep him around for next year, but I don’t see that happening.
Scott Feldman was quite good, too. While his line shows four earned runs, three of them came in the seventh. And they were inherited. It’s like Scott should have stopped after the sixth. He was stellar, and then couldn’t get anyone out – left the game with nobody out and the bases loaded. So that blew his quality start, but overall, despite the numbers, he pitched really well. Good to see, especially with the departure of Padilla, we’ll need guys like Feldman to stay consistantly good if we make a run at October.
Good to see a nice start to the series. Man, would it be some sort of major confidence and morale boost to leave Anaheim sweeping the Angels. I don’t think that’s going to REALLY happen, but boy, would it be nice.
Go Rangers!

Well, we salvaged the last game of the series. The Rangers won 6-4, and Tommy Hunter was way better than he had been the last outing (the one I was at, of course).
But to be honest, after so much gone wrong this series, I don’t even feel like writing about the win. Not a great feeling heading to Anaheim. You just feel like the Angels are going to bounce back from losing to us all year, and bury us.
Oh, and the A’s released Jason Giambi after the series was over.

After the last couple of games, with CJ Wilson blowing a save in the ninth, then being shut out, I didn’t really want to watch this. And I made a good time choice. We lost again.
Bah.