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What do you say about games like this? Offense all over the place. No pitcher was particuarly well represented by his box score.

Texas			IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Millwood (W, 6-4)	5.0	9	5	3	0	2	1	4.93
Wright (H, 11)		2.0	1	0	0	1	2	0	4.44
Rupe 			0.1	2	3	3	1	0	1	4.31
Guardado (H, 17)	0.2	1	0	0	0	0	0	2.90
Wilson (S, 21)		1.0	2	2	2	0	2	2	4.70

Baltimore		IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Liz (L, 3-1)		3.2	7	6	4	5	4	1	5.94
Loewen 			1.0	0	0	0	2	1	0	8.02
Cabrera, F 		1.1	2	0	0	0	2	0	0.00
Bradford 		1.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2.78
Johnson 		0.2	3	4	4	1	0	0	1.88
Sherrill 		1.1	2	1	1	2	3	0	3.72

In fact, that’s about all I’m going to do for this one. Was a pretty poorly pitched game (21 runs and 29 hits total), that’s what this one boils down to.

German Duran, a guy who has been here for awhile, but seemingly gets overlooked when you think of the current roster makeup lead the team yesterday to a 5-3 win. Duran, batting ninth went 3-3 with two doubles and two runs scored. He wasn’t the only one with multiple hits. Michael Young went 3-5, and Ian Kinsler who continues his assult on just about everything went 2-3 with a walk, as well as two runs scored and two RBI’s. I guess if you look just at the numbers, Kinsler “led the offense”, but Duran’s 3-3 struck me as more impressive for some reason. Can’t tell you why, that’s a “gut feeling”, but perhaps it’s from a guy who may be considered “the 25th man”.
Kinsler did jack another home run, and is turning out to be the player he was lauded to be when he was coming up. He was not slated to start the All-Star game, but he really should be. Stupid Boston media bias. Pedroia is a fine player, but he’s not comparing this year to what Kinsler is doing.
Pitching wise, Scott Feldman got a start. He wasn’t supposed to start, but got the call at the last minute. Pitched OK. Technically a quality start, but barely. Six innings pitched, three earned runs, four walks though (too many). He was OK enough to get the win. He deserves that, considering how many he pitched well enough to win he got no run support. The pen was great, not allowing any runs.
Baltimore isn’t even drawing 20,000 on a Saturday game. Man have their fortunes fallen. They were a 40k+ per night draw for a long time. Shall we blame it on the owner? :)

Well, after the game I went to against the Phillies when Padilla looked fairly pedestrian, I thought “OK, he’s been pretty decent, he’ll bounce back against Baltimore”. WRONG.
Vicente Padilla looked like the 2007 edition of himself, even evoking bad memories of Chan Ho Park & Mark Clark. He gave up a run in the first. OK, no big deal, just one run. He looked wobbly in the first inning, but this version of Padilla has been good with dealing with that. Not this game. In the second inning he gave up three runs, then four more in the third. They were all earned, too. Couldn’t pin the numbers on a bad play behind him – Pidente threw up eight earned runs on the scoreboard; not surviving the third inning. It was pretty darned ugly. I think the most telling stat is that he didn’t strike out anyone. While he’s not going to lead the league in strikeouts, he does get his fair share, and to strike out zero is a pretty much the telling sign. The Rangers pen did put up four innings of zeroes before Josh Rupe gave up two more runs in the 8th. But the damage was done, we were never really in this game.
That despite an actual first inning lead when Bradley doubled in a run. In fact, that double was our only extra base hit. We had eight more hits – all singles. Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie did allow two walks, but our bats were pretty much shut down. In fact, Milton Bradley pretty much was the offense. He was 2-4 with three RBI’s.
This game pretty much boiled down to Vicente Padilla was never in this game, so neither was the rest of the team. When you give up 28 runs total in two consecutive games, you pretty much aren’t going to be in either of those games.

Per my policy, I don’t write about Rangers losses to the Yankees.
Although I will say it was somewhat gratifying to beat Ponson, even if we didn’t beat the Yankees.

The Rangers had been godawful in Yankee Stadium the last few years. Oh, we’d get a win here and there to show we had a small pulse, but we’ve been effectively target practice for the Yankees. Not this year. After last night’s extremely well pitched game, we get another – and our second win in a row in Yankee stadium in as long as I can remember.
Kevin Millwood went for the Rangers, and had a pretty good outing. Went five innings, giving up five hits and a walk for one earned run. Struck out six. Funny thing is after just 84 pitches, he was out after five. I admit I passed out on the sofa for a bit there, so it’s possible there was an explanation and I missed it.
Josh Rupe followed and ended up with a blown save, as he gave up the tying run; his only in two innings. Frank Francisco followed with a scoreless frame. CJ Wilson closed it out, and after getting a double play, seemed absolutely fired up – got the final out on three pitches. Two strikes at 95+ on the radar gun, and the third was a ground out that shattered the bat. Was a great ending to this.
Offensively the Rangers had just nine hits. Six of them were by Kinsler, Young, & Bradley who had two each. But the big thing was Ian Kinsler, who ran us into this win. In the ninth inning, Ian got on, then stole second, and then stole third, and scored on a single in the top of the ninth. It was quite impressive to get the win against Rivera.
As a Ranger fan, you feel positively giddy about the lofty perch of three games over .500 – and to do it against Rivera and the Yankees made it a whole lot better. Dare we think sweep on Wednesday?

A lot was made about the fact that Arod tied Jimmie Foxx for 14th on the all time home run list at 534. But what I found far more amazing was the fact that Jason Giambi got a triple in this game! If ever there was a time to use Chris Berman’s NFL quote of “Rumblin, Bumblin, Stumblin…”, that was it. Speaking of Giambi, when did the Yankees allow facial hair again? I thought that was verboten with them. As long as I’m at it, Giambi’s ‘stache looked sillier than the promo pictures for Ramon Vazquez & Frank Catalanotto for 2008. :)
The Yankees only got four hits total this game. That’s the story of this one. The Yankees’ offense was shut down. Of the four hits, it was for the cycle, amusingly enough. There was a single by Benji Molina, a double by Jorge Posada, the triple by Jason Giambi, and a home run by Arod. Arod’s home run was pretty titanic, it cleared Monument Park – quite a shot. That was Feldman’s only mistake of the night, but to a guy who should be the eventual home run king is nothing to feel too bad about.
The Rangers didn’t exactly tear it up offensively, either. They had just seven hits, and Michael Young had three of those. Two of Young’s three hits were doubles. In fact, four of our seven hits were doubles. Our first run scored on a Josh Hamilton single to right, which scored Ian Kinsler. That gave Josh his 80th RBI of the season. Our second run, and the winning run was plated by Chris Davis, the second game in a row where he did that. Davis’ RBI was on a double to deep right field.
Nice caught stealing by Saltamacchia, throwing from his knees. His defense has looked better since Laird got hurt. If Salty keeps improving, one might think Laird would have a bit of deja-vu. That would be the second time he could conceivably lose his starting job when someone else came in and played great while he was on the DL.
Bit of bad news for Eddie Guardado. He had to leave the game after not throwing a pitch at all. He appeared to get hurt during his warmup tosses in the eighth inning.
It was nice to see Scott Feldman get a win – he should have many more. We continue to not score runs for him, but this time at least we managed to keep the other team off the board.
We finally got to two games over .500. Seems like such a “lofty goal” that we reached, even if it is just two games over .500 – know what I mean?
Anyone else want to see Chris Davis stay at first base for good, and pretty much be done with Catalanotto, and forget about this idea of Blalock being a first baseman? I don’t think Hank is back in 2009 anyway.

Chris Davis came to the majors with quite a fanfare. Well, at least from those of us who have a knowledge of the Rangers’ minor league system. On Sunday, he delivered what turned out to be the winning run. Davis hit a home run in the second inning, which gave the Rangers a 2-1 lead at that time.
That was the only run of the second inning, and we had just a lone run in the two frames surrounding it, too. The first inning was a leadoff triple by Ian Kinsler who was grounded home by Michael Young. The third inning run was a Michael Young double, who was brought home by a Josh Hamilton single. That was actually it for awhile. The Rangers didn’t score again until the bottom of the eighth, when they plated two on an RBI single by Ramon Vazquez, and a fielder’s choice by Michael Young.
The Rangers were up against former Ranger pitcher Jamie Moyer, who is still chugging along quite nicely at 45. He’s one of the few players left in MLB older than me, so I notice that. :) Moyer’s line wasn’t that bad – 5.2 IP, 7H, 4BB, 3ER. Well, the walks weren’t good, but 3ER in just about six innings isn’t horrendous.
Problem for Philly was that Eric Hurley was good. He gave up just one earned run in his 5.2 innings of work. This was enough to get his first major league win. Our pen followed up with 3.1 innings of scoreless relief to give the Rangers a series win, and take them back over .500 again.

This was the pitching duel I wanted to see. Vicente Padilla vs Cole Hamels. Both are pitching pretty good this season. Funny thing is, it’s not what we got. Hamels was better than Padilla was, but wasn’t outstanding himself.
Cole Hamels went seven innings, giving up six hits and two walks. This for a total of four runs, although he did strike out eight. Hamels was more streaky, as he gave up two runs in the first, then nothing for awhile, and the other two in the fifth. He seemed to dominate better than Padilla did (or did not as the case may be).
Vicente Padilla gave up more. In his six innings, he gave up seven hits and three walks. Seven earned runs. He wasn’t helped by the long ball – two of which he gave up. Both home runs were from guys you’d expect that from. Chase Utley & Ryan Howard. But Padilla was not the same guy who we’ve seen this year. Whether it was facing his former club, or the heat, or he was just “off” tonight, it wasn’t the real good Padilla we’ve been seeing in 2008.
Offensively, Michael Young did something he hasn’t done a ton of the last two seasons, hit a home run. He had a two run shot in the first inning, which was his seventh of the season. Kinsler & Young definitely had their sticks going – both went 3-5 this game. The rest of the offense was scattered amongst the lineup – Kinsler/Young were by far the standouts.
We did make some noise late when we tried to catch up – we scored a few in the bottom of the 8th against Chad Durbin, but couldn’t tie it up there. In the bottom of the ninth, the Phils brought on their closer Brad Lidge, who has returned to the lights out closer he used to be in his early days in Houston. Even then, we got a couple guys on, which brought up both Josh Hamilton & Milton Bradley. Both had the chance to win the game with a walk off home run – which I think everyone was hoping for. Didn’t happen. Lidge struck them both out.
Great defensive moment when Jimmy Rollins was gunned out at home plate trying to get an inside the park home run. Watching the play develop, I thought it was a no doubter, but then the throw came in better than I thought, and Rollins was nabbed on the hand – had he slid in with his hands down, he would have scored, actually.
This was a really good game. I was there, didn’t care for the rain, but the game itself was a good one – while the Rangers only led briefly in the bottom of the first, it had that “back and forth” feel to it. Enjoyed this one.
It rained almost the whole game. Started in like the second inning, and had various degrees of intensity through the rest of the game, but it never stopped. Praise be to God that it stopped when the game was over, so we didn’t get soaked going to the car, and more importantly that nobody had to deal with the rain in the crush of cars leaving the park.
Also, a random comment. If you’re going to take your kids to the game and teach them about baseball, that’s great. Don’t also teach them things like “Hey, dumbass – that wasn’t a strike!” There was a moron sitting behind my brother and I who was doing that. Loved he was teaching his kids the game. Didn’t love he was teaching his kids the ugly side of being a fan, too. Do you really want your kids growing up like Craig Bueno? Come on, don’t do stupid stuff like that.