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Without looking it up, I believe this was the first extra innings game the Rangers have participated in this spring. Could be wrong, but that’s what I’m thinking as I sit here to type this. Due to some upheaval at church and my responsibilities to that, I’ve been unable to even watch the last few games in a box score refresh. So looking backwards, I’m going to take a slightly different stance on “reporting” this game:

• No Michael Young or Mark Teixeira. That’s not good.
• Jerry Hairston went 2-5 with 3 RBI. That’s good.
• Gerald Laird, our #1 catcher was 0-3 again. That’s not good.
• Brandon McCarthy gave up two home runs in four innings. That’s not good.
• Bruce Chen gave up 1ER in 3.2IP. While that’s technically good, I say it’s not good. ;)
• Sammy Sosa did not play, so his name did not dominate the first 3-4 paragraphs of the various newswire stories for this game. That is good.
• Ian Kinsler & Ramon Vazquez had home runs. That is good.
• Pete Rose said he bet on Reds games all the time now. I don’t care anymore. Just put him in the HOF, but keep him banned from baseball.

Hopefully Michael Young isn’t out too long. The Rangers site is listing him as “indefinitely out” – which I always hate hearing. If this was the season, I’m sure he’d be on the DL.

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The story of this game should have been the Rangers facing off against one of their former stud pitchers, John Danks. Not the four or 5 paragraphs of Sammy Sosa the AP News wire story talked about. Or what more Ranger fans were concerned about, that being the beaning of Michael Young – who required a hospital trip and a surgical procedure to fix some damage from being plunked with a pitch. Mark Teixeira is also out too, which is never good.
As for our pitching… Ron Mahay didn’t give up any runs. That’s about all I can say good about that.
John Danks gave up 2 runs (1ER) in his two innings of work. I would have liked to have SEEN that, but I couldn’t – stupid no broadcasts in Spring Training! :) Gavin Floyd, who I know from Philadelphia as an underachiever really stunk up the joint. 9 hits, 2 walks, 6ER in 3.2IP. That’s kind of what I remember from his Philly days. Unfortunately, another former Philly boy, Vicente Padilla wasn’t that much better in the stink department this day. The best thing you could say is he didn’t walk anyone.
Sammy Sosa was 2-3, and Marlon Byrd was 2-4. Hairston & Sosa doubled, all the rest of our hits were singles. Still, I’m more concerned about how long it will take Michael Young to bounce back from his injury.

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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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