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The Twins open up a seriously large can of whoop-ass on the Rangers tonight, beating them 15-2. There’s very little positive to say about this game. Let’s see what I can find.
Rick Bauer pitched one scoreless inning of relief.
Nelson Cruz got his first major league home run.
Mark Teixeira hit a home run.
Not much else.
The “bad” list is signficantly larger than that. There’s not enough time to write about all of that, but a few of those “high”lites…
The Rangers gave up a 5 run first.
The Rangers gave up three seperate 3 run innings
Carlos Lee had his first ofer in a Ranger uniform.
The Rangers are in last place now.
After thinking a bit more about the Matt Stairs trade, I’m not as “WTF” about as I was when it was first announced. He can probably help off the bench, he’s better than my initial remarks said, but I still find it an odd move. Course that’s more an indictement (sp?) of Brad Wilkerson’s failure in 2006 than anything else.
Matt Stairs got beat 15-2 two nights in a row in two different uniforms.
John Wasdin was designated for assignment to make room on the roster for Matt Stairs, so we’re told. Makes me wonder who will go off the 25 for Kip Wells tomorrow.

I’m feeling kind of sick tonight, I’ll lay low on writing a lot. I was at the other two games in this series, of course they save all the offense for the game I’m not there for. :)
Carlos Lee continues to deliver with the bat again. Lots of offense all over the place. In games like this, you tend to get garbage lineup changes – we had Rod Barajas playing first base at the end of the game. :)

I was disappointed in this. 12 men left on base? Lose the series to the Royals? What the hell was this?
Well, Carlos Lee is as advertised. Was 3-4 with a walk. Wasn’t his problem.
Sigh. It was a really fabulous defensive play by Joey Gathright, though.
I know the party’s not over, but now were the last two games disappointing.

Vicente Padilla had nothing. He looked weak, and had over 30 pitches in the first inning alone. He was lucky to escape the first inning with just one run given up. We did tie it up in the bottom of the first, which I’m sure made everyone feel good.
But then it got really REALLY ugly in the top of the second, and that’s not even Padilla. The Rangers comitted two errors, and one was particuarly heinous, it looked like something out of little league, or a videogame. The not so bad one was Ian Kinsler dropping a ball thrown in from the outfield which allowed a run to score. But the particuarly heinous one was Gary Matthews in center whiffing on a ball, allowing it to roll all the way to the wall. By the time they retireived it out there, the Royal batter had come around third, and scored on that play. Ugly! There was one to my eyes at the park looked like an error but wasn’t counted as such – a ball got by Mark DeRosa in right which I thought should have been an error, but it wasn’t. We did actually get a true third error in the game later on when Mike Young had a fielding one. UGLY!
All of that combined to allow a big ol’ five spot for the Royals in the second. That was the game. Yeah, we managed to piece together a few more runs in the 6th & 8th, but after the second inning, the game was essentially over. Benoit did pretty good in relief, as did Ron Mahay, but John Wasdin allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to add insult to injury.
However, one positive note was the debut of Carlos Lee. Wearing #45 (RA Dickey’s old number), Lee made an immediate impact. Playing DH tonight, he went two for four – two singles in his first two at bats. Lee got a standing ovation as he came to the plate in the second inning, and was pretty well applauded after that from what I saw. I’ll talk more about the trade over the weekend, I’ll try and leave it out of here.
I was at this game tonight. We wnated to be there for the Build a Bear giveaway, and Samantha did fine for awhile, but she hit her wall, as the game started only half an hour before her bedtime anyway. She was having fun for awhile, but in the fourth, she hit the wall. We had to leave in the fifth inning, which is very unlike me, but the welfare of the kid comes first. I am going again Saturday night (by myself), so that will be different.
I did take some pictures during the game of a few things – I had decent seats, so I got some nice shots of some of the guys at the plate. Check out my pictures by clicking on the Carlos Lee thumbnail pic here.