Rangerfans.com

Here we come Phillies!

Posted by on at

This Tuesday through Thursday, the Rangers do something they’ve never done before. Play the Phillies in a regular season game. As I’m from Philly, I would have loved to have gone, but I couldn’t afford it.
Bet the house I’ll be watching all three of these from start to finish.
I just hope they come here next week. And here’s to Kevin Mench – hope he has a monster series back home!

G55: Rangers win Sunday afternoon, 8-1

Posted by on at

Got extremely busy, didn’t have time to write much.
Kenny Rogers pitched extremely well again. He’s been amazing since the start of May. With each performance, I have to imagine Scott Boras’ eyes are getting bigger. In fact, that scares me. Two of our best players now (Rogers & Teixeira) are both Boras clients. Not good.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

G54: We win again on Saturday in a shootout, 14-9

Posted by on at

Got extremely busy, didn’t have time to write much. But the best thing to write about is the total lack of good pitching in this game.
Chan Ho Park got his 100th career win, but he really didn’t deserve it the way he pitched. He was bailed out by our offense who beat up on an even worse pitcher, Jose Lima.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

G53: Our losing streak reaches 3 on Friday with a 2-1 loss to the Royals

Posted by on at

Aw dammit. A team we were expected to stomp on continues their odd mastery of us by taking a pitcher’s duel on Friday night by the score of 2-1.
Pedro Astacio took the hill for the Rangers and had a good performance. He gave up just two runs in his seven innings pitched. I could whine about that, but then I look at what Roger Clemens is going through this year, and it could be a lot worse. Still, one hates to waste a good pitching performance by the most inconsistent of our starting pitchers. That’s exactly what we did by scoring only one run, and that run was not exactly a power display.
Our offense was asleep on Friday night. KC’s Hernandez isn’t exactly a bad pitcher, but he isn’t one you would expect to give up just one run over six innings, but that’s what he did. The Royals threw out three relievers who threw shutout ball, so we couldn’t mount any kind of comeback.
The saving grace is that the entire AL West lost last night, so we remain .5 of a game back of the Angels for first place.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

A Rant about Payroll

Posted by on at

I don’t know how many of you read the Newberg Report, but Jamey’s site is something you should be checking out. In his newsletter, he has a co-writer who mostly handles minor league game updates. That’s Mike Hindman. Recently, Mike wrote (what I consider to be) a brilliant essay on the state of the Rangers’ payroll. It’s most excellent, I suggest reading it.
It’s rather long, so you’ll need to click on the “Read More” link below to check it out. Again, I wanted to point out this is not my writing, it’s by Mike Hindman. He was kind enough to give me permission to copy it here. I wanted to make sure my site visitors read this, too.
I think it’s a great stance against the Ranger fan who only thinks “SPEND MORE MONEY YOU CHEAP BASTARD OF AN OWNER”. Quite honestly, I detest fans like that, there’s a lot more to the issue than just throwing money at things.

[Read more…]

G51: The Winning Streak ends with a 6-4 loss to the Tigers

Posted by on at

The streak has come to an end at nine wins. Ryan Drese didn’t keep the great pitching performances intact, going 6.1 innings, giving up 10 hits and 6 runs (5ER). On the positive side, he didn’t walk anyone, but gave up too many hits. But it wasn’t all bad, Drese looked good through 6 innings, as we were up 4-1, and feeling good. But the wheels fell off in the seventh inning, when we gave up a 5 spot to the Tigers. That was the game in a nutshell, unfortunately.
Offensively, we had a few more home runs by the currently hot Richard Hidalgo, and the extremely hot Kevin Mench. Dellucci went 3 for 5, but no runs scored, or RBI’s.
The bottom line for me is that the game felt like the 10th win in a row until the seventh inning when all the air went out of it due to the 5 spot the Tigers got.
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

G50: Rangers win 9th in a row with an 8-2 win in Detroit

Posted by on at

Rogers finishes the month 6-0. His era was 1.6something or other. Several consecutive shutouts. I bet Roger Clemens would kill for some of the offense Kenny Rogers was getting this month. Kenny was godlike this month, and it was the backbone to our winning ways in May. May 2005 was also the month with Kenny Rogers on the calendar the Rangers handed out in April. For the record, Ryan Drese is the calendar boy in June, so hopefully he’ll have the same kind of month. :)
Don’t have time to write much else, but it was really nice to keep the streak going. Let’s see if Drese can keep it going tonight in Detroit, and keep us in FIRST PLACE – something we gained last night when the White Sox beat the Angels. :)
You can view my full update for this game here, or you can leave a comment about this game below.

Juan Gone came and went

Posted by on at

Well, Juan Gonzalez was activated from the Indians’ disabled list today. It cost Ryan Ludwick his spot on the roster, as he was DFA’ed.
And guess what? After his first at bat, Juan hurt himself again, and had to come out of the game. As much as my religion tells me it’s not nice to make fun of others’ misfortune, unfortunately all I can think of to say about this is..

Buddy Bell named Manager of the Royals

Posted by on at

Former Ranger Buddy Bell was named manager of the Royals today. Buddy, as far as I can tell is a good guy, and will probably give the Royals his best shot. However, I don’t see ’em doing much of anything anytime soon.
In fact, during tonight’s telecast, Josh Lewin remarked that in his previous mangerial stops, Buddy was in charge of some teams that were pretty much in the toilet, and that he might be good at getting players through bad times.
Doesn’t say much about his ability to turn it around when folks are talking about how he can keep their spirits up when losing? Yikes. Still, I wish him the best, I hope he can turn it around there.