Rangerfans.com

The Rangers started off this game in a way that would make Ricky Henderson proud. Ian Kinsler homered to start the game. We went up 1-0 quickly, and never relinquished that lead.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure it would hold up, as the 2009 edition of Matt Harrison hasn’t been near as impressive as the 2008 edition was. However, Matt held it together pretty darned well on Sunday night. In front of a national audience (this was on ESPN), Matt showed why he was considered a big piece of the Mark Teixeira haul. Matt threw just five innings, but had an elevated pitch count (100), hence his early exit. However, he didn’t allow any runs on six hits and no walks. Wasn’t dominating (too many pitches), but did what he had to during his time out there. Get the pitch count under control, and this would have been a rather spectacular outing. Matt was followed up by Jason Jennings, who gave up the lone run that the Sox plated. Darren O’Day came on after that, and continued to show that he was a good, solid pickup. Usually waiver claim pickups are “meh” at best – otherwise why would the original team let them go? However, O’Day has been quite good for us. Something nice to see. CJ Wilson finished up with a scoreless inning. Overall, some really good pitching from the team from Arlington.
Back to the offense. We had five single run innings. There was the first, with the solo home run by Kinsler (his ninth). We also had three doubles in the game and a bunch (nine) singles. Not a real power game, but enough to score a single run in the third, fourth, fifth, & sixth innings.
This was all against former Ranger farmhand John Danks. Danks went just 5.1 innings, gave up 10 hits and 5 earned runs. Walked one, struck out three. This is not the line that fits with the commonly held position that the White Sox got the better of the trade that brought Texas Brandon McCarthy. Even with the five earned runs in about five innigs, Danks’ ERA is just 3.81, so he’s not like this all the time, but we have a habit of roughing up “good” pitchers in Arlington. Still, Brandon McCarthy has pitched pretty well in 2009, so the pendulum might be swinging back our way in the “Who got the better of the Danks / McCarthy trade” question.
This puts us back at .500. Let’s see if we can get on a roll. I got really tired of playing the “dance with the .500 line” last year. I don’t really want to do that again in 2009.

I’ve fallen into a bad habit lately in skipping large parts of Rangers games via TiVo, because they get down early, or are playing crappy or whatnot. I decided to score this game, as I wanted to force myself to pay attention. So what happens? Rain delay to start the game. Then four other delays. In all, 2 hours and 27 minutes of delays spread out over multiple occasions. The last one was just 12 minutes, and one was over an hour. What a mess. I actually almost went to this game. When it was first delayed, I almost hopped in the car and drove out. I would have gotten there before it started, but it was still raining pretty darned hard in Garland, I didn’t want to drive in THAT.
Anyway, Brandon McCarthy started, and looked pretty good. He went five innings, giving up just three hits and one run. No walks, which is very good. The only reason he came out of the game, was rain. In fact, he went four, and there was a delay. They came back and played the top of the fifth (I presume to get it game legal), and McCarthy pitched that, but the game stopped again, and he was done. Shame, as he probably could have gone awhile more, he exited with just 68 pitches over five innings. Pretty good.
Luis Mendoza came in, and proceeded to stink up the joint, despite the smell of rain. He actually got two quick outs in his inning, then gave up a hit, a walk, and a rather painful hit of Jermaine Dye. Then a grand slam to AJ Pierzyqeiosdfgok (how the heck do you spell that?). Sigh. At that point, it put the A’s back in the game, as they had been down 9-1 before that slam.
Eddie Guardado gave up the other run. Darren O’Day continues to look like a great pickup, it’s a look we haven’t had from a pitcher in ages. The closest I can think of would be Mike Venafro, and even his sidearm wasn’t as pronounced as O’Day’s. Feldman played with sidearm for awhile, but has pretty much gotten away from it.
Fransisco finished up with a perfect inning for the save.
Offense wise, we did all of our scoring in the third and fourth innings. Three in the third, and six in the fourth. The three in the third were a three run home run by Hank Blalock, which finally put Tom Grieve on the board for the “home run call” game. The six runs in the next frame were pretty much due to the five doubles we had that inning. Nobody went hitless in this game, although Michael Young was the last to get a hit.
There was a really nice play by Omar Vizquel, who has played pretty darned well during his time here. Doesn’t look like a guy on the back end of his career, tell you the truth.
Jose Contreras does, though. 0-4 with an 8.31 ERA now. I wonder if we’ll get him next weekend in Chicago.

Well, that was disappointing. It was a loss. Of course it as disappointing.
Early on, Scott Feldman looked like the really good version of Scott Feldman. That one that seemed he had earned a spot in the rotation after the way last season ended, but Scott got shafted in favor of Mr. Anna Benson. Anyway, with MAB on the DL (shocker, I know), Scott got the start. He was lights out early on, was perfect through three innings, I believe. He ran out of gas in the sixth though. The three runs he gave up were all at the end. This is probably due to him not being stretched out enough. But before he ran out of gas, he looked pretty good, hopefully he can stick here, and we don’t have to put MAB back out there.
Derek Holland came in, and immediately gave up three runs – the three that were charged to Feldman, and gave away what should have been a Feldman win. Oh well. The inning after that, Derek gave up the fourth and deciding run. Darren O’Day and CJ Wilson came after that, keeping the White Sox off the board, but..
We couldn’t come back on this one. All the Rangers runs came off of starter Mark Buehrle. And they were in the first three innings. The first run was a Michael Young home run; that was the only homer of the game. Young also had a double, as did Andruw Jones. Elvis had a triple. But we couldn’t put it together against the Chicago bullpen, which pretty much kept us in check late.
That’s a bummer, as I really wanted us to win. While we’re playing the “dance with .500” game again, it’s better than “dancing with “the .350 winning percentage” game like we’ve done in the past.

I’m not writing about this, I found out last night a relative has colon cancer, and was given a timeframe to live. Not the kind of news that makes you want to write about baseball. Sorry folks, taking a pass on this.
If I feel better later, then I might go back and say something, but I just don’t feel like it right now.

Well, we have our first rainout of the season. I was watching, and saw them go into a rain delay. First, FSS showed some good Rangers rain delay programming. They showed the Chuck Morgan episode of “In My Own Words”. The old footage from the Grand Ol Opry is definitely worth the price of admission. :) Then the FSS people had some epic fail by putting on friggin POKER. The stupidest thing ever on television. Like that’s a substitute. I switched over to watching “Time Warp” on the Discovery Channel. Tonight’s episode featured Metallica, which was a rather entertaining subject. If you’ve never seen Time Warp before, it’s a show where they record things at like 1,000 or 2,000 frames per second, and play them back in regular speed, so things go stupid slow. Some of the things they do are quite amusing (like putting six airbags inside a car backwards so all the windows blow out, filling a pressure cooker with food, and blocking the pressure relief valve. Then watch it in slow motion. Most of their videos are restricted on Youtube from embedding, but I found one about water. Check it out below (in HD, too). You really should check this show out.
Oh, the Rangers game? It was rained out after awhile. Did they make it up tomorrow, when I would have called work and taken a vacation day to go to the doubleheader? Noo.. They scheduled it for May 29th. That’s bad for me, because it’s the day my son will likely be born! Darnit – I love doubleheaders!
Anyway, here’s the Time Warp video (if you’re on a feed reader, you’ll need to hit the site most likely)…

There’s more Time Warp videos available here (including the Metallica stuff, which was really cool).

Finally, the Rangers come home after what seemed like a longer road trip than it really was. I saw some of the game, but not most of it. Tonight was the next night in the set of dominos that is getting my house ready for my son, who should be arriving in about four weeks. I spent most of the evening after dinner putting together the crib – the same one our daughter used, and it’s all done up nice, looking forward to that (which will cause a large break when it happens, as I won’t update for awhile then).
The Rangers were very efficient with their offense tonight. They had just five hits the whole night. They were all singles. Hank Blalock had two, and Michael Young, Nelson Cruz, & Salty had one each. But it was enough, as we plated five runs for the win.
On the flip side, Kevin Millwood pitched another great game. He went eight innings, hanging in just long enough to get the win. Our final run came in the bottom of the eighth, when he was effectively (if not technically) done. He really should be 4-0 at this point, but he’s 2-2. This game felt like it was going to go the way of his losses, actually. Fortunately, he came in with the win. Kevin tossed 121 pitches in his eight innings, gave up just four hits and two walks for the two runs. He’s looking like the bulldog, and his 2010 option should vest easily if this keeps up.
Speaking of Kevin, has anyone noticed he looks more like an old school scruffball baseball player since he’s grown in that beard? Has a more “mean” look to him that way, I think.
Chris Davis got ejected from the game for calling balls and strikes. Home plate umpire Eric Cooper was calling a lot of high strikes, and while the TV coverage didn’t have the tracker to check, it seemed a lot were close. Davis grumbled a few times, as did some others (Kinsler and Andruw Jones had visible signs of annoyance). Cooper though seems like that kind of umpire that likes to argue back, and that never helps things. There were called strikeouts to end the second, third, & fourth innings for the Rangers. Just seemed like a lot.
We’re back to .500 with the win. That puts us 2.5 games behind the Mariners for the division lead. SEATTLE?!?! There’s two more games this month, be nice if we can win both of them, and finish 12-10 for April. Not stellar, but given our previous Aprils, it’s a definite improvement. Speaking of improvement, Vicente Pidente needs to show some. He’s been outpitched by Brandon McCarthy so far this year. Eek.

It’s only game 19, and I’m already in that “Oh Crap! Starting pitching has us down 4-0 in the second, time to hit FF on the TiVo!” mode. That’s not good this early in the season. However, after that, Matt Harrison got it together, and stuck around. All the Orioles runs came in the first two innings. After that, Matt Harrison stuck around for five more innings, making his final line fairly respectable. He ended up going seven innings and throwing 112 pitches, seven hits, four runs, one walk, three strikeouts. Not all that bad, given how the game started. Darren O’Day, CJ Wilson, & Frank Francisco followed up with two innings of shutout ball. There was just one hit, by Frankie. In all, not bad.
On the other side, we had an odd stat. The Rangers had ten hits. However, just by five players, who had two each. The five Rangers were David Murphy (2x singles), Michael Young (double, home run), Hank Blalock (single, double), Marlon Byrd (2x singles), & Taylor Teagarden (2x singles). Not a ton of power there, it’s mostly singles. But it was enough to get the job done. A single run in the fourth, two in the fifth, three in the sixth. Michael Young’s home run at that point didn’t give us the lead (we were still behind 4-3 then), but it was an emotional home run, as you felt the game was in our hands at that point.
David Murphy is looking up. After 19 games, his batting average is .100. Which is fairly pathetic, until you realize it was .000 after 17 games. So maybe he’s figured out his bat again, and we can get him involved, which might be needed if Josh Hamilton is going to miss any length of time.
Not a ton to say about this one. Nice to get out of there winning three out of four games.

Early on, it was looking pretty good for the Rangers. We were up 2-1 after two, and then went up 5-1 in the top of the fifth. But that was about the end of the good times.
Before we get to that, I do have to single out David Murphy. Murph was batting an ofer 2009 up until this game. He had a really great day, even though he went just 1-3. That one was a solo home run in the fifth inning. That his first hit of the year was a home run had to be good for him. What wasn’t good was that it game in the 18th game of the season. However. That wasn’t it for good news for him. He had two outfield assists. One at third base, and another at the plate. I forget which order they came in, but after one of them, he came up in the fifth and hit his home run. He had to be flying.
Murph wasn’t the only one with a home run. Chris Davis & Hank Blalock also had home runs. Those home runs accounted for all five Rangers runs. An old story, for sure.
Also early on, it looked like Brandon McCarthy was the good version. The Orioles were held to just one run through four. Not lights out, mind you, but one through four is a good number to be working on. However, the wheels fell off in the fifth. McCarthy allowed three runs in the bottom of the fifth to let the Orioles back in the game. We were still winning at that point (5-4), but Jason Jennings fared no better the next inning, giving up three more runs (plus a bonus run in the bottom of the eighth). Meh on that.
Sigh. Oh well, I had forgotten this series was four games after the Saturday night game. I thought we were going for a sweep this game, but that didn’t happen.
I’m already spoiled by HD. None of the games in Toronto and none in Baltimore are in HD. Bummer.