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Don’t have a lot of time to write about this. Rangers lost. Kason Gabbard wasn’t good. Eric Hurley wasn’t good. Ian Kinsler was picked off first base.
Jarrod Saltamacchia had a two run home run, Kevin Mench doubled.
Rangers dropped below .500 for the spring. That’s a place they’re familiar with a bit too much.

With only 11 games played so far, a theme has cropped up. Something Rangers fans can relate to over time. The starting pitching stunk. AJ Murray was the stinker-du-jour today. Two innings, six hits, one walk, four earned runs. Kam Loe, who seems to be pitching himself down the pecking order in the last 12 months followed, going one inning, allowing two hits and two runs. That’s six of the nine the Pads got right there.
The only real offensive highlight for Texas was Kevin Mench’s three run home run in the seventh inning. That closed the Rangers scoring. We did have two other runs, but they both game on singles by Mike Young and John Mayberry, Jr. Ian Kinsler had a double, but that was it. Seven hits in all. One homer, one double, and five singles. Not a major offensive threat.
That’s mostly due to San Diego’s Greg Maddux & Wilfredo Ledezma. Between the two of them, they went six innings, allowing two runs and three hits (Ledezma also walked two). The big damage was against their third pitcher (Heath Bell).
Not much going on for the Rangers this Saturday. The loss drops us to 5-5-1 for the spring.

Jason Jennings was good. (2.2 IP, 1H, 0R)
Robinson Tejeda was not. (1IP, 2H, 3ER)
Travis Metcalf was good. (2-3 with run scored)
Josh Rupe was not. (0.2IP, 1H, 3BB, 3ER)
Josh Hamilton was good. (1-2, grand slam)
Jamey Wright was not. (1.2IP, 5H, 3R, 2ER)
Six straight Rangers reached base in the third inning. Very good.
Three Rangers wild pitches by three pitchers in this game. Not good.
Seeing my little girl play in the snow for the first time ever in the back yard – EXTREMELY good.
Brandon McCarthy and injury back in the press again. Not good. :(
I said I was going to continue that until I ran out of good things to say. I’m done. We lost, anyway. :)

As sloppy as Wednesday’s game was, Thursday’s was much better. Rangers pitching was the order of the day, not allowing any earned runs at all. The ChiSox did score once, but it was an unearned run on a Jason Ellison miscue.
Vicente Padilla started this one and went three innings, giving up just one hit, and two walks. Extrapolated over a full game, that’s six walks – too many, but for now, it’s OK. Full season box scores show you the number of pitches thrown. The spring box scores don’t seem to show that, so I can’t say how crisp he seemed from just reading the box score. But three innings with just one hit, and only one earned run is quite nice.
A followup to that was Scott Feldman, who also tossed three scoreless frames. Feldman had just one hit as well, allowing no runs, and one walk. Feldman also had seven ground outs vs NO flyouts. That’s great to see (Padilla was one grounder, and six flyouts). Feldman also faced just ten batters in his three innings of work; one over the minimum (the one hit). Bill White, Paul Kometami, & Elizardo Ramirez each followed with an inning of work. All three allowed no runs, and only Kometami allowed a single hit. Very nice pitching by the Rangers on this game. Something we’ll need a lot of of once the season gets going.
Offensively, we had the longball working. Got three of them this game (Travis Metcalf, David Murphy, & Chris Davis). John Mayberry Jr also chipped in with a double to round out the extra base hit portion of the offense.
If you look at the line score, we had a two spot in the second, and then lone runs in the 3rd, 5th, 8th, & 9th. With spread out scoring like that, you’d think our offense was also spread out, and you’d be right. Only Mayberry had more than one hit.
I’m encouraged by the performance so far by Vicente Padilla. By all accounts in the local press, he’s more friendly, in better shape, and trying a lot harder than before; he appears to be healthy. Which will be important, as we’re hearing the word injury more often than I’d like this spring. I always kinda liked Padilla when he was in Philly, and I could like him here too, but he seems to have become a victim of head games. I always kind of liked the throw at people mentality he has. Not that I want to INTENTIONALLY throw at people’s heads, but the fear of “will I get hit” can work for a pitcher. He just needs to learn how to get that fear into people without plunking 7 or 8 guys at once and starting brawls all the time (hello Anaheim).

This game from last Wednesday can be summed up in one word. Sloppy. The two teams combined for four errors and twenty seven hits for a total of eighteen runs. Not good. Fitting this mess happened on a day that my wife and I formally lost our second baby.
Ramon Vazquez had a good day for the Rangers, going 3-3 and scoring a run. Jason Ellison also went 2-2 and scored both times. Travis Metcalf had a solo home run, and Nate Gold drove in two runs. This was a day for singles, because of the fourteen Ranger hits only one was not a single (Metcalf’s HR). Overall, the hits were pretty spread out, there were a total of eleven different Rangers who had one.
Pitching wise, Matt Harrison had six hits and a walk in his 2.1 innings of work. Gave up five runs, but only three earned. Jonnny Poveda followed that with a stink job that was way up there on the Stink-O’-Meter. Only had one third of an inning pitched, and gave up three hits, three walks, and FOUR earned runs. Bleargh. Even Mark Clark wasn’t that bad. Speaking of sloppy, later on Jason Davis gave up three runs, but only one was earned. Of course we had five other pitchers who threw for Texas who didn’t give up any, but these numbers above are fairly sloppy.
A couple of former Rangers had decent days, too. Gabe Kapler went 1-2 with an RBI sac fly, as well as scoring a run, and another RBI as well. Laynce Nix, went 2-2 with a run scored and an RBI. Both of these guys are in camp with the Brewers on NRI’s – my guess is that neither breaks camp. Kapler was in attempting a comeback after having been out of ball for a short time – I wonder if he’ll play the minor league bounce around game, or go back to being a manager in the minors for the Red Sox.