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Padilla to DL

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  • P Vicente Padilla placed on 15 day DL, retro to Aug 25
  • P Kameron Loe recalled from AAA [ Link ]

Mendoza recalled

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  • P Gabe White optioned to A Bakersfield
  • P Luis Mendoza recalled from AAA [ Link ]

Eddie Guardado traded to the Twins

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Eddie Guardado was traded to the Twins today, his original organization. Eddie was one of those guys that when we first signed him back in January, I thought “What the heck are we doing?” Turned out Eddie was a great guy, pitched pretty well, if not spectacular, and had a fire in him that you wished more guys had. Still, we’re not going anywhere, and if he can help the Twins, I wish him well.
In return, we get minor league prospect Mark Hamburger. My first thought upon hearing that was not how well can he pitch, was “how badly can Josh Lewin go off on the obvious jokes there”? Since I’d never heard of him, I’m going to shamelessly steal from Jamey Newberg’s update about him (since Jamey seems to know everyone in every minor league team everywhere)…

The player Texas has acquired from Minnesota for Eddie Guardado is 21-year-old right-handed reliever Mark Hamburger, a Minnesota native who is 1-2, 4.17 with 13 saves in 14 tries for Elizabethton in the Short-Season Appalachian League. The lanky 6’4″ righty has held the league to a .250 average (righties have been particularly inept, hitting .221/.292/.305 off of him), striking out 40 and walking 13 in 36.2 innings while inducing 1.27 as many groundouts as flyouts. He posted a 1.20 ERA in 2007, logging 15 innings (12 hits, four walks, 12 strikeouts) after signing with the Twins as an undrafted free agent out of Mesabi Range Community College.

To take Eddie’s roster spot, the team purchased the contract of Bill White, who made a handful of appearances for the Rangers last year. Nine appearances with a little over 9 innings pitched, and an ERA of 4.82. Not the greatest numbers there, but by all accounts has been having a bangup year in 2008. Given that we’ve effectively tanked in August, we’ll probably see a lot more guys come up once the rosters expand next Monday.
The bigger question is – who will be the formal closer, or are we going to hear that phrase that ends in the word “committee” again?
UPDATE: The closer will be Frank Francisco. Probably not a terrible idea.
Also, the flip side of the Guardado trade is that Mike Lamb was designated for assignment by the Twins to make room.

Guardado traded

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  • P Eddie Guardado traded to Minnesota Twins for P Mark Hamburger
  • P Bill White purchased from AAA [ Link ]
  • OF Jason Ellison designated for assignment
  • OF Nelson Cruz purchased from AAA [ Link ]

McCarthy Up

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  • P Brandon McCarthy recalled from AAA
  • P Kameron Loe optioned to AAA [ Link ]

G129: Texas opens Indians series with 7-5 loss

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_08_22_clemlb_texmlb_1&mode=wrap>MLB.com Recap

I did not see or hear any of this game. I was down at the Starplex watching Black Sabbath play (they currently go by the name Heaven & Hell, they’re with Dio again). Due to this, I’ll skip all commentary on the game, as I need to recover from the concert. :) I don’t know if you know, but I do Black Sabbath’s website too – you can see it here: http://www.black-sabbath.com. Doing that affords me the luxury of doing things like watching the gig from on stage. Here was my vantage point. :)

So yeah, I missed Hank Blalock’s debut at first base. I was busy backstage with the band after the show, so by the time I finally got back home, I was in no shape to start watching a Texas Rangers game. :)

Blalock Up

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  • 3B Hank Blalock activated from DL
  • 3B Travis Metcalf optioned to AAA [ Link ]

G128: Rangers power and pitching lead to 9-1 win over Tigers

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2008_08_20_detmlb_texmlb_1>MLB.com Recap

This game has two big things which would sum it up.

First was the pitching performance by Kevin Millwood. Kevin got a complete game victory, something rare in baseball these days. He looked good, scattering six hits over his nine innings. Only helped out the Tigers once (his lone walk), and struck out four. No Tiger had more than one hit, although four of the six hits were extra base jobs. I was there in person, and the performance by Millwood just seemed to blend into the background. I was’t overwhelmed, nor was I bored. Of course, I was there with some friends, so my talking might have gotten in the way of my baseball perceptions.

However, the big story was the power. We had six home runs total. Only one of them was not a solo shot. That was Travis Metcalf’s home run in the second – there was one runner for that one. However, we had five more solo shots, including two different back to back shots. The six home runs were by Travis Metcalf (two), Brandon Boggs, Michael Young, Josh Hamilton, & Milton Bradley. Nice fun night to be there, and actually is the first home game win I’ve been to this year.

A few other random notes..

The Rangers six shooters make me feel old. They sat down next to me at one point waiting for the time to go dance on the dugout. Wow, I’m probably double the age of every one of them. That was helped by the fact that I thought I was old enough to be all of their fathers from the looks of it. Plus I turned 43 today, which made it even more “fun”.

The smoke from a Josh Hamilton home run hovered over the home plate area for quite awhile. Normally fireworks smoke blows away, but this one came to home plate, and just hovered there. I had major flashbacks to the original Star Trek episode Obsession where Capt Kirk is hell bent on destroying a cloud that was going around killing people.

The crowd wasn’t terribly large, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere, either. Guess six home runs will do that. :)

Driving out, I wasn’t sure if the game was even going to be played. Came out from Garland where it was nice and sunny. Once I got past the big post office just west of Dallas, I ran into a major rain storm in Grand Prairie. It was nuts, I couldn’t see two cars in front of me. Got to the ballpark, and it was nice and blue skies again. I know Texas weather can do things like that, but it was like three different types of weather.

Nice to have the Rangers back in town on August 20th. Since I was a little kid, I’ve had this tradition about going to a baseball game on my birthday. When they’re not in town, I pick the next closest calendar date. But August 20th has been out of town for many years now.