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The feel good feeling of the first time through the rotation in the 2008 season is gone, replaced by a sinking feeling when you see how sloppy we’re playing in the field, and how inept we are with runners in scoring position. The play from the other day when Byrd led off with a triple, and was stranded there is still particularly annoying.
Last night’s game had yet another error for the pile for the 2008 Rangers. Where the heck is all this coming from? We were a much better fielding team than this the last few years. Our general core of players is the same, so why are we fielding like the Bad News Bears? No, I don’t want to hear it from Randy Galloway, either. Yeah, platitudes like “it will come around” are heard about now, but I don’t want to hear that EITHER. I want them to be fielding like they should be – RIGHT NOW.
I think Jason Jennings thought he was wearing an Astros uniform last night, as he certainly pitched like the 2007 vintage. BAD! 4.2 innings, seven hits, four walks, seven runs (six earned). With performances like that no wonder our attendance last night was 16,541. When the game started, I noticed the TV coverage is not showing a lot of shots of the park anymore. I wonder if that’s intentional – because the one shot we saw of the upper deck taken from a camera on Green’s Hill showed an almost empty upper deck five minutes before the start of the game. It was quite embarrassing.
Positives were Hank Blalock’s home run – that looked really good. Milton Bradley has definitely changed my mind about his signing – he’s doing very well getting on base. Our bullpen was pretty good – 4.1 innings of shutout ball.
But Good Lord man, we’re playing like crap at the moment. I’m already at the point where I’m skipping large sections of the game via TiVo, because it’s painful to sit through all the pitches watching the team.
NOT a good feeling to have on April 15th.

Our inability to hit with men in scoring position really made me mad yesterday.
We could have tied the game in the bottom of the 10th. Marlon Byrd led off the inning with a triple. A friggin TRIPLE no less. He was stranded there, and we lost.
Got too mad at this one to want to write about it.

There’s two things that pretty much will guarantee that you’re not going to win a game. The first is when a Cy Young caliber pitcher is on the mound against you, pitching like he’s Cy Young. Most teams don’t have a chance. The other is your own shoddy defense. If you put the two of them together, forget it. You don’t have a chance.
Roy Halladay, when he’s on, is a pitcher that will keep anyone down. He’s an extremely great pitcher, and one shudders to think what he would be like record wise had he been on a team that was better than the Jays have been the last half a dozen years or so. That’s the kind of the guy that was wearing the Toronto uniform with the number 32 on the back. Halladay threw a complete game against the Rangers. As has been talked about a lot of places, that’s a dying thing, but Halladay has led the league in that stat the last few years, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Through eight he was almost totally untouchable, allowing just four hits and a big fat donut in the runs column. In the ninth, the Rangers finally broke through with a Hamilton single, and then a Byrd double for our only run, but even that feels like it didn’t happen.
Luis Mendoza was activated from the DL and pitched pretty decently. If you look at his earned line, it was five innings, eight hits, one run, and three walks. OK, eight hits & three walks might not be great, but in the “where it counts” department, he gave up just one unearned run. Unfortunately, he gave up four runs in all, and that’s where the defense came in. Making yet another error (do we lead the league in that? Seems that way), Hank Blalock’s fielding error paved the way for three unearned runs in the fourth, pretty much handing the game to Toronto what with the way Halladay was pitching. Mendoza took the loss, but helped out the starting staff’s ERA, as his ERA is now 1.80.
There’s very little to write about offensively by the Rangers. We had just six hits in all. Other than the run in the ninth, the best thing is probably Marlon Byrd, who went 2-4 and getting the lone RBI of the game. Byrd’s been horrendous offensively so far this season, and his 2-4 raised his batting average to .130. Hopefully he’s broken out of the slump, and can get going. Can never have enough runs.
Anyone else concerned at how BAD Catalanotto has been offensively since returning to the Rangers for this go around? I always liked Cat, but good Lord – two years in a row when his batting average is so far down there that the Mendoza Line looks like something worthy of hall of fame induction by comparison.

Vicente Padilla went six innings, but it wasn’t just enough that he went six. He gave up a bunch. But not right away. He was pretty darned good through the first inning, then had a Chan Ho Park moment, and just totally lost it, giving up a four spot in the sixth. It wasn’t pretty. He then had another scoreless frame in the fifth, but gave up a fifth run in the sixth inning before exiting the game.
But what bugs me most is the three errors the Rangers had. One by Frank Catalanotto and two by Gerald Laird. This is way too many. If my count is right, we have more errors (12) than games played at this point (10). That’s just pathetic. Our guys are better than that. We seem to be playing generally pretty good so far this season, but the errors are disturbing.
Kaz Fukumori continues to NOT be the pitcher he was in spring training. In spring his ERA was zero (or close to it), but his ERA in the regular season after tonight was a sparkling 32.40 (!). In his one third inning of work, he gave up four hits, three runs, plus a walk. Not good at all. He just didn’t look good – not even close. Ugh.
Dustin Nippert who had an ERA of about a billion after his first outing came in and did a good job, going 2 2/3 innings, and only giving up two hits with no runs. That helped, as we did make a late charge, but it wasn’t enough.
The Rangers had eight hits in all. Five singles and three extra base hits. One was a double (Ian Kinsler), and the other two were home runs. Hank Blalock had a solo shot in the first, but the other was by Josh Hamilton, who I believe everyone was just waiting to see his power. He delivered in the seventh inning with a titanic home run which not only went into the upper deck in home run porch, but.. It went out one of the walkways for the section, and presumably kept rolling for awhile. It was a seriously impressive home run. I’ve been out there, and I know what it looks like from way out there. In fact, here’s a picture from my seat selector showing you what the view is like from there. Keep in mine the actual landing spot of the ball would have been about 15-20 feet above my head in this picture.

On another note, Frank Catalanotto is getting off to another ice cold start, just like last year. He was decent enough towards the end of the season, but we need that output now. His average is a measly .105. That’s pretty darned awful. Of course, Marlon Byrd is batting .053. Bleargh. :(
Overall we’re not doing good, but I don’t like these games that just get away from us. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for Fukumori’s horrendous outing.
Oh well, there’s always Saturday night and game 2.

The Rangers get over .500 for the first time since 2006 with this win. Hey, every other blogger, newspaper, writer is saying that, so I might as well too.
Kason Gabbard continued the streak of pretty decent starting pitching we’ve been getting so far this season. Now he wasn’t lights out, but he wasn’t Chan Ho Park/Mark Clark bad, either. 5.2 innings pitched, 7 hits and two walks. Three runs. Fell just one out short of a technical quality start. Most of that came in the sixth anyway. After five innings, Gabbard was leading 4-1, it was a pretty nice to see him do pretty well. In fact, when he was pulled, I didn’t think he needed to; he didn’t look that awful.
Jason Wright followed, and blew the lead, giving the Orioles their fourth run, which at that point tied the game and giving Wright a blown save in his ledger. He didn’t pitch all that bad, either, but gave up his hits in the wrong place. In 2.1 innings, he only had two hits and one walk.
C.J. Wilson saved the game, which was cool because he saved game one of the doubleheader as well. 18 pitches; two saves in one day is quite a good thing.
Offensively, we got started by a solo home run by Michael Young in the first inning which barely cleared the right field wall. Milton Bradley also did pretty well with two doubles and a couple of RBI’s. Adam Melhuse also had two hits. The rest of our hits were all scattered singles.
In all, a nice win. Wasn’t terribly crisply pitched, but we had enough timely hitting to pull out the win in the bottom of the eighth inning.
I wish I could have been at the doubleheader.