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The Rangers and Brewers played two games today. Only one counted in spring standings, but there was a lot of beanings, in both the “A” game, and the “B” game. In all, six guys got hit. With that many, unless you had ME pitching, you would think that the latter ones would have been retaliation. Just seemed like a lot. From reports, the one for Nelson Cruz was a bad one, as he was hit on the head, and didn’t move for awhile. Was taken to the hospital, had Xrays, cat scans, etc… Never like to hear those words in a baseball game recap.
Ranger pitching was a tad unusual this game. Normally in the spring, I’m saying something like “it doesn’t matter this guy gave up 27 earned runs in two innings, as he won’t be with us in April anyway”. This game turned that on it’s head. We used a total of six pitchers. Three either will be, or have very good chances to be with us. Those are the three that gave up the runs. The other three, the ones who won’t be here in April (or just are guys I’ve never heard of) are the ones who pitched shutout ball. Now to be fair, Kameron Loe was the starter and gave up two runs, but they were all unearned. Koronka gave up three as well, but only two were earned. CJ Wilson gave up two (both earned). That was a bit unusual.
Offensively it was another “scatter” game. We had twelve hits, and nobody had more than one. The park we played in must have been HUGE as Sammy Sosa got a triple. Kenny Lofton, Brad Wilkerson, and spring training catcher Kevin Richardson all had doubles for their hits. We also had home runs from Miguel Ojeda & Nate Gold. So the majority of our hits (8 of 12) were extra base hits – that’s always nice to see.
Michael Young and Kenny Lofton both committed errors. And then there’s the beanings I mentioned before.

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Not much to say about this one. Great pitching on both sides. Only hiccup was Scott Feldman in the 8th, who gave up the two runs. Other than that, every other pitcher on both sides was unscored upon. Including three perfect innings by Jamey Wright.
Michael Young now has about 600 hits in the last 3 or 4 games, he’s batting over 1.000 I think. :)

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Isn’t there supposed to be a rule in spring about fielding a representative team on road trips? Our starting lineup this game had just one regular in it, Gerald Laird. The other starters were mostly guys who likely won’t be with us in April, with he possible exception of Jason Botts; maybe Marlon Byrd – but my point is that most of these guys aren’t the real indiciative lineup.
And as you go down the box score, not many of the guys they were pulled for were destined to be with the big club, unless you get into pitchers – most of those guys would be. Which actually makes it feel worse, as we gave up a boatload of runs and hits (13,17 respectively). What’s amusing to me is the text based box score that I copy during Spring Training doesn’t even have the pitchers’ lines listed. :) Ugly all over the place. 22 runs and 31 hits.
Blech.

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Taking a short break from writing a recap due to illness in the family. This is a placeholder page.
I remember seeing the box score right after this game happened (I’m writing this 3 days later), and thinking “Well, there goes the honeymoon with McCarthy”. I’m sure there’s a cadre of Rangers fans that would only think trading John Danks was worth it if McCarthy had no bad outings all season, and won the Cy Young award. He had a bad spring outing, and I’m sure these people are all going “SEE!” :)
McCarthy did have a horrendous outing, giving up 5 hits, 1 walk, and 7 earned runs in two innings of work. On the flip side, a guy who I almost want to pitch like McCarthy did (Bruce Chen) had the line that people expected McCarthy to have, that being 3IP, 4H, 0ER. It scares me that Bruce Chen might win the fifth spot. I’ve followed him since his days in Philly, and he looks great joining another team, and then gets torched.
The Rangers runs came in bunches. Two 4 run innings, and one three. However, 7 of them were unearned. All four Neal Cotts gave up were unearned, as were the three that their reliever Wells gave up. So we had some help in winning this one. Lots of home runs in this game for both sides, but then again, with 20 runs, you figure to have some. 11 of our 15 hits were by four players (Kinsler 2, Byrd 3, Young 4, Sosa 2), the rest were scattered. Ian Kinsler has seemed decent all spring, actually. That’s a good feeling.

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Taking a short break from writing a recap due to illness in the family. This is a placeholder page.
After looking at this again a few days later, it would seem that Vicente Padilla did not have a good game. His line shows six hits, two walks and three earned runs in three innings. Oakland’s starter (Dan Haren) did not fare that poorly, giving up just one run in his three innings of work. Frank Francisco, who has been reportedly not so great to start the spring tossed a shutout inning of work and got the win in the game, actually. AJ Murray struck out two of the three batters he faced, and Joaquin Benoit chipped in with a scoreless couple of innings of his own. German & Galarraga (the guys not likely to be with us come April) gave up the rest of the runs the Rangers allowed.
On the other side, we had three doubles and a triple. No home runs though, but enough singles to come through from behind and beat the A’s 7-6. Catalanotto and Botts were both 2-2 today, Sosa & Kinsler were 2-3. No real “leader” on offense this game.

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