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The Rangers won a game that was delayed rather a lot in the middle by rain. Something like two and a half hours. To be honest, I didn’t watch most of the game. It was on, but I was caught up in trade deadline discussions, so while the game was on, I was flipping between the Rangers game, and the talk on MLB Network as well as Baseball Tonight. I was a trade deadline junkie this day. :)
Vicente “Swine Flu” Padilla started the game for Texas, and went six. Six hits, three earned runs. One of those “technical quality starts” (as I call ’em). He was OK. Gave up a two run home run in the first inning, which is where most of the runs he gave up came from. That was the only power he gave up – the other five hits were all singles. Jose Lopez had the home run, and had three of the nine Seattle hits.
Offensively, Taylor Teagarden had a solo home run in the fifth. I point that out first, because he just missed a grand slam in the second (or third). Hit to the track, was an off the end of the bat shot – he “just” missed it. Darnit. Marlon Byrd however, made up for that with a three run shot in the bottom of the fifth. This was well timed, because at this point, it was obvious there was going to be a major rain delay.
And yeah. I was sitting at home. By myself. And I did the birdman flap. I’m such a dork.
Anyway, as the wind started blowing around and we were being treated to multiple shots of trash cyclones around the park, the rain started coming down. In the middle of a Michael Young at bat in the seventh, with the count 3-2, they couldn’t take it, and called a rain delay. The rain delay was interesting for a couple of counts. I got to watch one of the “Under the Lights” episodes. The one with the travel in New York & Boston. I hadn’t seen that one before, so I enjoyed that. They also showed the fireworks show on TV, as they shot ’em off during the rain delay. That’s happened to be before. Some years ago I was there for a July 4th game, and there was a three and a half hour rain delay, and they shot off the fireworks in the middle. Something about curfew on fireworks.
Anyway, when the game started again, Michael Young took one pitch for a ball, and walked. But we had no more offense after the rain delay. In fact, Byrd’s home run sealed the scoring for Texas. Jason Grilli allowed a run in the eighth to make it a little more interesting, but CJ Wilson closed it out for a 5-4 win. It was a long game. In fact, according to the box score (see the MLB Game Recap link above), the rain delay was two hours and eighteen minutes, which was eight minutes longer than the game (at 2:10).
We’re three games behind Anaheim now (who also didn’t do anything at the trade deadline), and just 1.5 behind Boston for the Wild Card. It’s August 1st as I write this. The trade deadline has passed. I think at this point, you can realistically start talking about playoffs, and not have it be a “Hey, that’s too soon” kind of thing. Go RANGERS!
P.S. I really like that we didn’t deal Derek Holland. Let’s hope that Holland holds up his end and shows us why we shouldn’t have sent him away.

In the top of the ninth inning, this happened, and I don’t think any Rangers fan really wanted to see it..

Derek Holland had done a lot to get to that point. In the ninth inning when this happened, he had allowed just two hits, and no runs. He walked just one batter, and STRUCK OUT TEN! He was seriously impressive, and on a night when there was mucho talk about him being put in a package to send to Toronto for Roy Halladay… I’ll wager he kept himself a Ranger by pitching that way. If he was just “eh”, he likely would have been moved. That’s just a gut feeling. I’m writing this actually at 5:15PM on Jul 31st, and the trade deadline has passed now. But Derek Holland was pitching like Roy Halladay on Thursday night. He was just lights out. That Warner Madrigal allowed a run to score is a crime. That should have been a complete game shutout. I wished Holland was allowed to stay in there. Oh well, he didn’t. But that’s the story of the game. Derek Holland – WOW. Three hits by the Mariners in all. Very impressive.

It overshadowed the fact that there was a major power output by the Rangers, and the fact that our pitching got more talk than the home runs. Something else unusual for Texas. We had five home runs. Blalock. Salty, Byrd, and two by Michael Young, who has become a power machine in the last week or so. Young is on quite a tear, he had three hits again, which I believe is three or four in the last week. Impressive numbers. Nelson Cruz also had two doubles, so we had a lot going on with the bats. But it is quite an accomplishment when our starting pitcher’s performance overshadowed what is the standard Rangers story of power.

Also, and I can’t resist. When I first saw the M’s reliever Chris Jakubauskas, I admit to a childish response. I looked quickly and thought it said Jackass. Sorry about that.

Well, that a big steaming pile of….

I mean, I should have heeded this warning, but I didn’t. I actually watched part of this mess.

Taking a mulligan. No time to write today, too many things going on. Really nice to see Eddie Guardado chirp at Jim Leyland after a minor beanball war broke out.
https://www.rangerfans.com/images/eddiechirps.gif (Thanks to Jamey Newberg & Drew Shepard for that pic).
I also missed seeing the entire game, as my wife and I were watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, which had just come out on Blu-Ray on Tuesday. Since the kids were born, we don’t get a ton of time just to ourselves, so I chose that over watching another Rangers game. :)

I don’t think anyone expected Tommy Hunter to be the person to finally stop our 2009 slide against Detroit. If you’re reading this, you know that we were 0-6 against Detroit this year going into Monday night’s game.
But he was. I’m running out of time to write about this, but he was impressive looking out there.
Nelson Cruz & Michael Young both had really impressive home runs to almost the same spot in the ballpark.
Michael Young had three more hits – now at 123 for the season. At that rate, he’ll end up with 318 hits. :)
Nice to get the win, and even better that the Angels lost, so we’re now just 2.5 games back behind them. That’s the same amount we’re behind Boston in the wild card standings, too.

Kevin Millwood started the game, and you felt good about it, based on his performance this season. Felt like we’d be able to take the game and the series heading back home. Kevin went out there, and threw two innings, allowing a single hit. Struck out two. Then that was it. He was out after two innings, replaced by Dustin Nippert. At the time, you didn’t know what was going on, but later in the game, it was announced that he was out with tightness in his left gluteus muscle. Doesn’t sound like any fun.
So Nippert followed up with a pretty good performance. Nippert went 4.1 innings, and allowed just a single hit, two walks, and one run. In fact, all the Rangers pitching was pretty good. In all, the Royals got just four hits.
In fact, for the most part, the pitching was pretty good. The Royals trotted out there Sidney Ponson. Capt Aruba pitched like the guy that was with the Rangers for awhile. Six innings, five hits, NO earned runs. When you get that from Ponson, you thought – uh-oh. Perhaps they were going to outdo us. The game after all was scoreless through six innings.
Then we hit the seventh. Rangers led off with a double, a single, and steal, a fielding error, a couple more singles, you get the idea. We plated three in the top of the seventh, which turned out to be all we needed. The Royals scored one in the bottom of the seventh against Dustin Nippert, and another in the bottom of the ninth against Willie Eyre, but that was it. We also had a four spot in the top of the eighth, which was highlighted by an Andruw Jones home run.
Ian Kinsler had a fielding error, his seventh of the season in all.
In all, every Ranger starter had at least one hit except for Elvis Andrus. Michael Young had another three hit game, he’s been on fire lately. In all, he has 120 hits for the season, well on page for another 200 hit season.
Coming home.