Rangerfans.com

Despite the final score of this one, it was a pitcher’s duel for the majority of the game. In fact, going into the eighth inning, the score was still 3-1. Last week, we were totally shut down by Scott Kazmir, and he comes to Arlington, and does it again.
Scott went eight innings, giving up just six hits and two earned runs. One of the earned runs was a Ian Kinsler solo home run, but other than that, we didn’t garner much of a sustained attack. Kazmir was quite solid again – in fact, beyond just “solid”. Eight innings, two runs, six strikeouts, no walks. Yeah, he was pretty darned good.
Vicente Padilla came back from the bereavement list to start this game, and he also pitched pretty good. Not as good as Kazmir mind you, but Pidente went six innings, giving up five hits, three earned runs, with no walks and three strikeouts. Vicente’s downfall here was the longball. Of the three runs on his ledger, two of them were solo home runs. You always want to minimize damage by having allowed home runs be solo home runs, but a run is still a run, and when going up against a guy like Scott Kazmir, the less the better.
I actually admit to stopping watching the game after the top of the eighth. Once the Rays went up 6-1, I switched over and started playing videogames. I see from the box score that the pen stunk it up. Robinson Tejeda, who probably is on his last legs with the Rangers gave up three earned runs in his 1.2 innings of work. But the real kicker was Kameron Loe. Oddly enough, Kam allowed no earned runs, but there were a total of six runs scored by Tampa Bay during Kam’s frame. All six were unearned, but UGH. Six runs allowed. Major suckage there.
We had a minor uprising in the bottom of the ninth, but it just took us from being down from ten runs to just eight. We lost this game hard in the 8th and 9th innings.
I did enjoy the games I played on my Xbox 360 though. :)
Oh yeah, Sidney Ponson. I think most Rangers fans expected the Sidney Ponson experiment to end with a streak of four or five losses in a row with 35 runs given up during that time, and an era around eight. That’s not what happened. Sidney was released by the team (technically DFA’ed, not officially released yet) with good numbers on the field. His final stats with the Rangers:
9 Games
4-1 W/L
3.88 ERA
55.2 IP
71 H
36 R
24 ER
3 HR
16 BB
25 K
Pretty darned decent numbers, actually. So the DFA of Ponson came as quite a shock. Officially, the Rangers stated the reason as conduct unbecoming a player, and unprofessionalism (I’m paraphrasing). The link above has some more details.
It’s nice to see in this town that imports players like Deion Sanders, Terrell Owens, Pac-Man Jones, Tank Johnson, and Michael Vick (mark my words, he’ll be here eventually) that a team would have the balls to cut a player for being disrespectful. I applaud that. Too bad the local NFL team doesn’t have the same kind of morals regarding player behaviour in management, otherwise I could probably like them.

This game started off like a lot of games we’re used to seeing the last few years. Down 4-0 before we come up to bat the first time. This latest edition of that no fun piece of baseball comes at the hands of Kevin Millwood. Kevin gave up three doubles and two singles in the first frame, and it tallied up to four runs. Ugh.
To Kevin’s credit, he turned it around, and ended up throwing six innings in all. Turns out those four runs in the first were the only runs he gave up all game. It was actually the only runs the Rangers gave up at all, since the pen (Guardado, Francisco, Benoit, & Wright) didn’t give up any in the three frames of relief they threw. Nice piece of frosting on that remark was the fact that there were zero walks given up by Rangers’ pitching in the entire game. Always good to see that. Even in losses.
Offensively, we were going up against C.C. Sabathia. This year, Sabathia isn’t himself – he’s 3-8 with a 4.81 ERA. He’s a better pitcher than that. Still, he’s a guy who strikes fear into a lineup, despite his troubles this year. We did get to him a bit. CC threw six innings, and gave up five runs (one was unearned), but walked three. He got hit up a bit and didn’t seem overly dominating.
At the plate, the Rangers had twelve hits in all. Highlights were five extra base hits (two doubles, one triple, two home runs), and three hits for both Michael Young and Milton Bradley. Both Young & Bradley had two RBI’s each, but they were topped by Ramon Vazquez, who had three RBI’s (as well as a triple in the game).
Was a nice comeback win. Would have been better if we didn’t give up the four in the first frame, but eh – a win is a win. We’re doing the .500 dance again, can’t get any streaks going long term (in either direction fortunately).

Blah. Ugh. Mr Yuck graphic. Any number of my one word reviews would go well here.

Rangers won, but I don’t have to write about it. Read the mlb.com recap link above.

Blah.