Rangerfans.com

Well, Nick Bierbrodt walked 7 Indians in his 3.1 innings. Through the first three innings, he managed to escape all his walks pretty well, giving up just one run through three. However, in the fourth, he loaded the bases and was pulled. John Wasdin came in and gave up a hit after getting squeezed on a called third strike call. Had we gotten the call, we would have gotten out of that inning with nothing scoring, and would have been in great shape, as Wasdin gave up just one run in his 3.1 innings, so between Wasdin/Bierbrodt, they pitched 6.2 innings, and would have given up just two runs. Oh well.
The Indians got an emotional lift by getting Bob Wickman back – their closer, who was involved in a big trade between the Indians & the Brewers back in 2000 – he preceded John Rocker as the closer in Cleveland. :) Anyway, the game was a mostly well pitched one, save for Bierbrodt’s walks.
Fortunately, the A’s also lost, so we remained tied with them for first place in the division. This was the halfway point of the season. We’ve played 81 games. There’s 81 to go. I strongly doubt anyone (probably including the Rangers themselves) expected us to be tied for first place, and have a pitcher with the most wins in the majors at this point. This season has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Right now, I’m almost leaning towards not making any moves at the trading deadline. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year, I say let them rebuild, and if we manage to get to the promised land with the guys we had, it’ll make it that much sweeter.
A few more roster moves for this one. We put Perry on the DL, and brought up Manny Alexander. That allowed Mike Young to DH for the night, and Alexander played short – a first in both cases for the season. We might have to make another move, as Rod Barajas was hit on the hand with a pitch, and while the reports are encouraging that he’ll keep playing, Gerald Laird isn’t quite ready to come back yet, so we’d have to have our third string catcher acting as our front line one if Barajas has to go on the DL, too. Like we need more players there. Sigh.

No time to write – too busy coming back to work from the weekend. :)

I will avoid the cliche here about scoring this many runs on July 4th and the word fireworks, thank you very much.
A couple of games ago I started my commentary with Bombs away! I should have saved that for this game. We had 6 home runs this game (Soriano, Blalock, Mench x2, & Teixeira x2) as we did that one. However, two of them were history making. We had two grand slams in this game. One was by Teixeira in the 9th inning, and the other was by Hank Blalock. The Rangers have never had a two grand slam game ever before. Hank’s slam was also a pinch hit grand slam as well, so it was a lot sweeter.
On the other side of the coin, when this game started, with a pitching matchup of Joaquin Benoit & Andy Pettite, I figure we’d lose 18-3, not win by that. Benoit went 6 innings, giving up two runs on 5 hits (1BB, 5K). A kind of outing that you’d normally like from your pitcher, but Benoit continues to tease. His next start will probably be 2.2IP with 7ER.
We took back the Silver boot with this absolute destruction of a game against the Astros. Now we just need to put it back together again.
My wife and I ended up going out to Frisco on Sunday night, we had tickets to the Roughriders game. There was this very cool thing during the 7th inning stretch where they had everyone blow up these balloons, and at the end of God Bless America, everyone let them fly into the air – it was a very funny, and rather cool sight – I wished I had my camera with me, would have made for a great picture. One other fun thing was between the top and bottom of the firsts, the Frisco mascot drove around the warning track on a vehicle throwing tshirts into the stands. When his vehicle passed the Riders bullpen in left, the players out there dumped a gatorade tub full of water on the Mascot, and because the Mascot’s outfit is essentially a giant towel/sponge, he was instantly waterlogged – the players in the pen were laughing their asses off. :)
Had fun out there, and we got a great pitching performance by Kameron Loe, and Laynce Nix had an RBI hit in a rehab assignment – that he had to come out of early after diving for a ball. :(
Oh yeah – we had five all stars named to the All Star game this evening. Soriano was voted in. We had Francisco Cordero & Kenny Rogers named from our pitching staff, and the players/Torre brought along Hank Blalock & Mike Young. We’ve never had five before. We had 4 in 1999 (Raffy, Pudge, Zimmerman, Wetteland, 1998 (Juan, Pudge, Wetteland, Sele), and 1989 (Ryan, Russell, Franco, Sierra). I really would have hoped that Blalock could have started the thing, but at least he’s there. I’m happy. For the record the guys I voted for almost regularly in this year’s all star balloting were:
AL:
C – Pudge (voted in)
1B – Mark Teixeira
2B – Alfonso Soriano (voted in)
3B – Hank Blalock (reserve choice)
SS – Mike Young (reserve choice)
OF – Manny Ramirez (voted in)
OF – Carlos Beltran (player vote, but can’t play due to league switch to NL)
OF – Vladimir Gurerrero (voted in)
NL:
C – Mike Liberthal
1B – Jim Thome (reserve choice)
2B – Jeff Kent (voted in – I was voting for Marcus Giles, but he got hurt)
3B – Mike Lowell (reserve choice)
SS – Adam Everett
OF – Barry Bonds (voted in)
OF – Ken Griffey Jr (voted in)
OF – Scott Podsednik
Being that I grew up in Philly, and lived there for over 20 years, that’s why I have a few “homer” votes for Phillies in my NL ballots. There’s also no way in hell I’d ever vote for J.D. Drew or Scott Rolen. Not a chance. Why? Let’s just say it’s a “Philly thing”.
And for the 32nd man voting, I’m voting for:
AL: Paul Konerko
NL: Bobby Abreu

Damnit. Lost two games in a row against the Astros in essentially the same way. Well, OK, maybe not, but that’s what it felt like to me. We had gone up 6-1 on the strength of a 6 run 5th inning (two three run home runs by us). However, Morgan Ensberg stormed back with a grand slam that topped a 7 run 5th for the Astros, gave them the lead, and they never looked back, really. Damn.
Crap. Now we have to win tomorrow’s finale by three runs to take the series and the Silver Boot.

I hate games like this. These are emotional rollercoasters. You get the high of coming back to tie the game, and the BIG low of giving it right back and losing the game. I’m writing this on Monday, so most of the details aren’t fresh in my mind, but this was supposed to be rematch of the pitcher’s duel from Arlington last weekend between Roy Oswalt and Ryan Drese. It wasn’t. Oswalt gave up 9 hits and 5 runs. Drese gave up 8 hits and five runs. Neither was really crisp at all. Drese at least got a ND in the game.
Oh well, the Lone Star series is now tied after we won 2 the last weekend.

Well, this was a day game, which means I only superficially got to pay attention. I did score the game, but about 40% of my scorecard was me looking at what had happened on the MLB Gameday scorecard stuff. And I didn’t miss much. Wasdin was not good today, we fell behind a lot early, and that was about it. Made a little noise when Kevin Mench hit a three run home run, but we were behind the 8 ball in this one almost immediately, and never really had a chance to win, I felt.
The loss makes the 2-2 split in Seattle seem like an 0-4 to me.

No commentary from me, because something happened last night that almost never happens. I got tired in the middle of the game and went to bed! I hate these 9PM starts.

No time to write commentary today.
Brett Carre: The fun in Seattle ends with a 4-3 loss on Tuesday. This was a game that was on the table, but we couldn’t pull it out. One of the few times this year that we couldn’t pull out one like this.
Benoit pitched decent tonight, but we gave up just too many tonight as we could only produce 3 runs tonight. Some people said tonight his future with the Rangers was on the line. I think he preformed well enough to stop talks about that until his next start!
On the offensive side we had chances but didn’t take advantage of them. This is a game I think we should have won, but Seattle got the big hit tonight by Aurilia, the two run homer with two outs in the 6th.
Kenny is on the mound tomorrow. Does that mean we can already put a check in the “W” column?