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Yesterday was Tommy Hunter’s 23rd birthday, I believe. I know it was his birthday, not sure of the number, but that’s really irrelevant. He started the game for the Rangers, and looked pretty decent last time out. So he took the mound on his birthday (with his family in the stands), and threw a pretty decent game this time out, too.
He went 5.1 innings, throwing 90 pitches. I missed when he came out of the game, so I’m not sure of the situation, but the one runner he left on base didn’t score. Didn’t seem like a huge jam from the boxscore, but I missed that part of the game. Anyway, Hunter allowed just three hits and one run. He also walked three and struck out five. Not exactly dominating numbers, but definitely good enough for the win, which was his first in the majors.
That was held up by our bullpen, who backed up Hunter with 3.2 innings of no hit, shutout relief. Jennings & Wilson held it for Frank Francisco who bounced back from his meltdown in the return to the closer’s job. Frankie threw one inning, allowed no hits and no walks, striking out one for the save. Nice to see this kind of pitching. Wish it would have been more consistent in June.
Offensively, we didn’t have a ton going on. While Tampa Bay only had three hits the whole game, we didn’t do a ton better. The Rangers had just five hits. All five of our hits were against Tampa starter Scott Kazmier. Their bullpen was as good as ours. However, it was enough. No Ranger had more than one hit, they were scattered, however, there was some power hidden in there. We had two doubles (Byrd, Cruz), and the big deal was suddenly power stroke heavy Hank Blalock. Hank hit a two run home run out over the center field wall in the fourth inning, putting us up at the time 2-0. Both teams added a single run in the fifth, and that was the end of the scoring.
Bit surprised that our offense is still in low gear, but the win was enough to tie us for first place with Anaheim again. Feeling good about that, as I’m sure most of us are.
To quote Jamey Newberg: Smoaklahoma! Here he comes. September callup? :)

I seem to have developed a pattern of updating series after they’re over, doing all the games at once. I need to get out of that. By the time I get to the third one, my mind has a hard time coming up with something unique to say about the final game. Such is the same here. We won, but all I can think of to write about was how Frank Francisco blew the save, and then we won on a walkoff home run in the bottom of the ninth.
One other thing worth mentioning: Julio Borbon got his first major league hit – and RBI at the same time. Also, from the TV coverage, they didn’t show the ball going back into the dugout – that usually gets shown for some reason.

Well, for the first time in a couple of years, I headed out to the Rangers game to retake the pictures for my seat selector feature here on my site. First done about ten years ago, it’s something I’ve always had fun with, but it is a heck of a lot of work. Once I get the pics all sorted out, I’ll update my online feature, and post a story about it.
Anyway, when that was over (I started at 5:10PM and finished at 6:48PM, downed 60oz of Gatorade, and two bottles of water during all of this), I sat down to watch the Rangers game. It’s only my third game of the season so far, but I always like just sitting in the last row of the upper deck with my Palm to score the game and my headphone radio. I enjoy those. If the park wasn’t so far away, I’d probably go to more. Anyway..
After an insanely long first two innings (an hour), I came to the conclusion that I’d be there for awhile. The Rangers scored three in the bottom of the first, and then gave them right back in the top of the second. It was 3-3 after two. Neither pitcher had much of anything on the mound, and both escaped some situations that would have made the three a much larger crooked number on the scoreboard.
Joe Saunders is a pretty decent pitcher, but not here. Before the game, one of the radio guys (get well Eric!) said that Saunders was something like 0-5 with an ERA in the 12’s in our ballpark. This game didn’t help. Saunders was hit pretty hard, giving up eight runs on five walks and six hits in just 3.2 innings. He was pretty bad. In fact, in the first inning, I really thought we were going to score six or seven and get him out of there with less than an inning pitched, but he escaped that.
Our offense was propelled by the home run. We had five of them in all. Four off of Joe Saunders. Kinsler led off the game with one. Marlon Byrd had a two run shot later in the first inning. That felt good, as a lot of ours have been solo home runs lately. What felt better though was the three run home run Byrd also had in the fourth inning, which was followed up by a solo shot by Nelson Cruz. David Murphy also added a solo shot in the seventh. The home runs accounted for seven of our nine runs.
Pitching wise, I have to say that Scott Feldman was pretty pedestrian, bordering on awful the first two innings. He completely failed in the shutdown inning, he just looked bad. Which is what makes innings three through six more impressive. After 57 pitches in the first two, Scott settled down, and pitched extremely well in 3-6. He needed about 60 pitches to get through the other four innings, and allowed no more runs. At one point he retired a ton of guys in a row – I forget how many. In fact, had his pitch count not been at 116 after six innings, he probably would have come back out – he was looking QUITE good.
Problem is our pen made the game seem closer than it really was. Going up 9-3 in the ninth, CJ Wilson coughed up a couple of runs. One was unearned, but still. 9-3 would have felt a lot better than 9-5, even though both resulted in a win, and us getting back to just one and a half games out of first.
Still kind of bummed at how far we fell in June, but the win helps ease that a little.

When Anaheim came into town, I think most Rangers fans weren’t particularly looking forward to it. We started the month up four and a half games, and the Angels came into town now up a game and a half. That’s not a particularly fun thing when you factor in the sluggishness the Rangers have exhibited the last few weeks. I saw the inbound Angels as something bad. They’re not firing on all cylinders either, but right now they seem better than us, and I wasn’t thrilled with that mindset.
Game one didn’t help most Rangers fans. They dropped it 5-2. Our offense was mostly flat again. Granted, we had eight hits, and three of them were from Marlon Byrd. Outside of the Birdman, just five hits. Two of them were home runs, however. Byrd & David Murphy went back to back in the third inning, but that was the only two runs we got.
Pitching wise, Pidente was more than flat. He wasn’t very good. Five innings, five earned runs on ten hits and two walks. Throw in a home run for good measure, too.
The only really positive thing to take out of this game was that our bullpen was great. Four guys combined for four innings. Only two hits and one walk were allowed, but no runs.
But at the end of the game I had a really bad feeling.

Derek Holland started this game, and pitched the way you’d think a first year starter should. Pretty horrible line. 5.2 innings, thirteen hits, one walk, seven runs allowed (six earned). The only thing really good was the fact that he struck out eight guys in his time out there. But he was hit around pretty good, that was the reason the Rangers lost this game.
Offensively, there wasn’t a ton going on. Rangers managed only six hits. Two doubles and a home run (Chris Davis again). That was about it.
I’ve seen uglier games by the Rangers, but it just felt like it should have been a whole lot worse. The Padres set a season record with sixteen hits in a game. Figures it’d be against us.

There is not a ton to say about this one.
The Rangers managed just one hit. Was a bloop single by Michael Young early on. That was it. San Diego starter Chad Gaudin had what appears to be the best start of his career. He went eight innings, gave up just the one hit. He did walk two, but struck out nine Rangers. The only Ranger to not strike out was Elvis Andrus. Pretty bad when the best highlight you can think of is who didn’t strike out.
Tommy Hunter was called up to make the start, and was a hard luck loser. He went 6.1 innings, giving up just the two runs. One was a solo home run. But I felt bad, he pitched pretty well, he was just seriously upstaged by Chad Gaudin.