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I got a bit behind with Spring Training Updates, and I’m taking a pass on the dozen or so I missed.  Got way too busy with actual work (which is good).  Will be with it for the regular season.  :)

Matt Harrison had a great start here, leading the Rangers to a 4-0 win over the Dodgers.  He went five innings, allowed just a single hit.  No walks.  Struck out three.   Only 57 pitches over five innings – he looked middle of the season strong.  Would have liked to have seen how much more he could have done, but it is just March 16th.   That’s good for me, as I have him on all four of my Fantasy baseball teams.  :)

Overall, Rangers pitchers had a combined awesome game.  9 innings pitched, just two hits, ZERO walks, and eight strikeouts.  Bloody awesome pitching job in this game.  The kind of thing that I’d love to see going into the season – hope this kind of outing happens more.

David Murphy led the offense with a single and a double.   Beyond that, it was a scatted pile of singles amongst everyone else.    Murph had one of the RBI’s, as did Jeff Baker, Jim Adducci, and Greg Miclat.

This was the first of two split squad games today.  This one was started by Nick Tepesch, a guy getting a lot of notice this spring.    His line wasn’t great, but he went five innings.   He gave up three hits and a walk, and three earned runs.  One of the runs was a solo home run.   I didn’t see this game, so I can’t comment on what his pitching looked like.  The stories from people who were there said he was decent, but his line didn’t bear that out.  Will have to take their word for it.

Craig Gentry got a triple this game, something I hope to see from home a lot this year – that guy can FLY!    We had a scattered offense, nobody had more than one hit.    AJ had his third double of the season.  Still think the guy’s a jerk, but so far this spring, he’s doing well offensively.

Starting to not like seeing the Giants, they’re starting to annoy me.    Matt Cain looked good.   Thing that was more annoying is there isn’t one pitcher that gave up like four runs in 2/3 of an inning – the damage was kind of spread out over several pitchers, so it was a combined loss.   Rangers threw 7 pitchers out there, with nobody pitching more than two innings (only Lowe did that).    Rangers offense managed a bunch of singles, and one double.

Getting close to not wanting to write about the Giants anymore like I don’t write about losses to the Yankees.

 

In a theme that might become a recurring one for me – “Where was this win against the A’s last September?”…

Randy Wells started for the Rangers, and had a few wobbles, but held his ground.  Went 5 innings (first Ranger to do that this spring I think), and gave up three hits, and four walks.  Struck out four.  The only run he gave up was a solo home run.   The rest of the Rangers pitchers are guys who won’t be around (well, maybe the first one).  The releivers were Nate Robertson, Yoshi Tateyama, Jeff Beliveau, & Coty Woods.

Offensively, we had three doubles, and six singles.   The RBI’s came from guys we will need a lot of them from once the season starts: Berkman, Beltre, Kinsler, Andrus, Moreland, and well, not the last one as I don’t think Solarte will make the club.

But it was a good, solid mid spring training game.  Guys are starting to get stretched out a bit, some regular names are showing up, we’re about halfway through at this point.  :)

The Rangers scored early, often, and through the whole game.   We scored in all the innings except the 5th & 6th.  2,4,1,1,0,0,2,2 are the innings the Rangers scored in.   In all the Rangers had 12 hits and 6 walks, which makes it easier.  We had just two doubles, and two home runs, and a pile of singles.    This is a game where our power came from some newer sources.  Double by Leonys Martin, and a Home run by Mike Olt.  We also had a home run by spring surprise Jeff Baker, and a double by Jared Hoying.

Pitching wise, Alexi Ogando pitched well in his start, getting four shutout innings.  They weren’t without incident as he did walk too many for four innings (three), but he didn’t give up any runs, which is the bottom line.  The three runs the Brewers got all came from Tanner Scheppers, who did NOT have a good outing at all.

We were also helped by three Brewer errors.

I remember when we played the Giants in the series a couple of years ago thinking that Madison Bumgarner was going to be the soft touch after the first few guys.  I was wrong then.  He also did it do us again this game.  Granted, it’s spring training, so he’s not going eight innings, but…  In the four that he did pitch, giving up just one hit and a walk.  Struck out four.   Threw 63 pitches.  Overall, that set the tone. [Read more…]

The Rangers survived this game, really.  Four of the five Rangers pitchers gave up runs, but our offense stepped in and saved the day.   Jeff Baker, who is tearing it up this spring doubled.  Craig Gentry homered (his second), and is showing some surprising pop this spring.  If he can sustain that, it will help an awful lot going forward.

Not a ton to write about this one, the pitching was “meh” from what I can see.  :)

…and this was the second of the two split squad games Saturday.  This is the road game, managed by Ron Washington with a starting lineup that featured only Craig Gentry & Geovany Soto (maybe Mike Olt) from the expected opening day roster.   This was borne out in the pitching staff too, as the Rangers used nine different pitchers, each throwing one inning.   All but one of them threw a scoreless inning.   The only one who didn’t was Tateyama, who gave up the two Padres runs.  It was a two run home run, as well.   Tateyama actually only faced five batters!

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This was the first of two games today as the Rangers did the split squad thing, also playing against the Padres in another game.   But before we get to that..

Where was this game in the final series of last season?  Gah!   Could have saved ourselves from that mess that was the Orioles game in the playoffs!   Barf.   Anyway…

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