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I had to time shift the game due to some family duties, but I really wanted to see this game. For some reason I felt something good was going to come out of Brandon McCarthy. Not that I was thinking no hitter, or something like that, but I just had a feeling he was going to do well. So I broke out my Palm, and decided to score the game. I was also curious to see how it would come off on TV. It actually kind of reminded me for some reason of the park that the Corpus Christi Hooks play in. As the game started, it felt like I was watching a minor league game. The camera angles were off – it took me a couple of innings to get a feel for what would be called a ball and a strike because they weren’t the usual camera angles I’m used to seeing. Apparently I’m not the only person who thought that, Richard Durrett wrote about that over on the DMN Baseball blog, too.
McCarthy had a decent line overall, but seemed a bit shaky in the second and third innings where he gave up the three runs the Rays got. Walks didn’t help – they never do. In all, Brandon went 6 innings, giving up 3ER on 6H & 3BB. He did strike out seven though, which was a good thing – and no home runs, either. Since I was scoring, I was paying attention to pitch count, and it did seem a tad high (110 over 6 innings). Still, after the horror that were some of his early starts, this was a decent outing.
Benoit seems to have solidified himself as an important part of our bullpen after several shaky years there of not even knowing if he’d be on the team – this is good, it’s nice to have a consistent link backwards like that with Jack. I admit I was one of the people calling for his head a few years ago, but I really like the fact a homegrown guy has gotten through it and found a place where he can be productive.
Our late inning pitching dodged a bullet once, but couldn’t dodge the same one twice. When you have to intentionally load the bases for a force out at home, it’s never good. We got out of that in the bottom of the ninth with Otsuka on the mound, but we had to do it a second time with Feldman on the mount in the bottom of the 10th, and that one didn’t work. Actually, Feldman’s would have been harder, as it was bases loaded, nobody out. So we lost that game. Unfortunately, it seems to be a common occurrence on the road – what are we, something like 5-100 as the visiting team this year already?
Offensively, we had only 7 hits, and they were scattered. Only person with more than one was Hank Blalock – who also had a solo home run in the game. Brad Wilkerson had a double, but had to come out of the game with.. wait for it… a gimpy hamstring. We actually had more extra base (3 2B, 1HR) hits than singles, which doesn’t usually happen. Outside of Hammer’s home run, the other two runs we got were on sac flies.
And speaking of hamstrings, Tampa Bay lost Rocco Baldelli to that, we lost Brad Wilkerson. Seems there’s a boatload of hamstring injuries around baseball this year. That wouldn’t be from guys who aren’t taking steroids, would it? ;) Nah, I don’t really mean that, but there are an awful lot of them. Seems odd.

The only thing I can think of to write about this is..
Sigh.

A phrase that I know some people would rather go away certainly applied on Sunday afternoon. It was Mother’s day, so it was fitting to break out the old tired phrase, “Chicks dig the longball!” There were eight of them in all.
The Rangers got ’em from Ian Kinsler (his team leading 10th, a two run shot in the 3rd), Hank Blalock (his third, a solo shot in the fourth), Brad Wilkerson (his fifth, a two run shot in the 6th), and the best one, a walkoff solo shot by Nelson Cruz in the bottom of the ninth. The Angels had four as well, and surprisingly, none by #27. Two of their four were by Gary Matthews, both two run shots. Their others were by Shea Hillenbrand, & Mike Napoli.
Now, in all both teams combined for 22 hits, of which eight were home runs. The teams combined for 3 doubles, so that’s 11 extra base hits, and 11 singles. In the overall scheme of things, it wasn’t dominated by home runs, but darnit, when there’s that many of them, it just seems so much sexier to say “the game was dominated by home runs!”. In a way it was, 12 of the 13 runs came off of home runs, so it is right I suppose, but there were 14 hits that weren’t home runs. Ah well, I guess I’m just being too pedantic again.
Mike Wood was our starter, and he didn’t have a great line at all. Went four, gave up 7 hits and 1 walk (plus 3 of the 4 Angels HR’s). CJ Wilson gave up another run (solo HR), but Benoit, Otsuka, & Gagne followed up and stopped the home run barrage. Millwood comes off the DL tomorrow, I would expect Wood would get sent back down.
I remember being at the park some years ago when the Rangers had 7 or 8 home runs themselves, it’s quite entertaining to watch that many of them. Bet the folks roasting at the Ballpark Sunday afternoon enjoyed it. Especially the longballs.
Chick dig ’em, you know.

This was a game I only peeked in on – as it was a day when I was watching Samantha (mommy was at work), I only got to see a few pieces. I did get to see the lone really good bit, which was Texeira’s home run, and I saw Kam Loe take his frustrations out on a water cooler in the dugout. Overall, it was the typical loss to the Angels. :(
Bartolo Colon returned from the DL to pitch against us. He wasn’t that dominating – in fact his line was pretty pedestrian for him against the Rangers. He went 6IP, 5H, 3ER, 2BB, 6K. Decent stuff, but not totally dominating. The three Angel relievers didn’t allow any runs, so they kept things in check – as they usually do.
On our side, Kam Loe was not terribly good the first two innings. He gave up all 5 of his earned runs there, but after that, settled down, and didn’t allow any more runs until he exited the game after the seventh inning. That sounds very Chan Ho Park like. On the positive side, Loe didn’t allow any home runs.
We did have three more errors, one of which led to an unearned run given up by Otsuka in the 8th. Is it me, or do we have way too many of those in 2007? Seems higher than usual, but I haven’t had the time to do the research to look that up.