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Behind a nice pitching performance by John Thomson, the Rangers bounced back and beat the Red Sox 6-1 on a rainy night in Arlington. Some of the storms in the area affected my recording of the game, because my satellite feed got knocked out for pieces of the game (although I only missed about 10 minutes total) – plus I had one blackout while I was watching the game. Anyway, rain delay in the 7th aside, that’s the end of my rain talk.
Going against a knuckleballer (there’s only two in the AL – Tim Wakefield and Steve Sparks) can either be great or awful. You either score 20 runs or get nothing it seems. We did get off to a start that led me to believe there would be 20 runs, that being the leadoff home run by Ryan Christenson. The big hit was Juan Gonzalez’ two run single with the bases loaded in the 6th to take the lead before the rain delay came. We picked up another run on a bases loaded walk that inning, and then scored a run in each of the two innings after the rain delay as well to take it to 6-1.
As said before, Thomson pitched well, going seven innings and giving up just one run, walking one and striking out three. Now if we can only get Park to do this all the time…

A frustrating game. I have to admit that before the game started, I predicted doom. The two highest paid AL pitchers went head to head, but since the pitching quality of said pitchers wasn’t quite the same, I expected us to be losing something like 10-0 after 5 innings. We did have an ugly start early, but managed to get out of the first five innings only down 4-1. Not insurmountable, especially given that Pedro did not seem like Pedro. He gave up 6 walks in his time on the mound, threw 120 pitches, and seemed at least reachable, if not hittable, as we only had a hit or two through that time. Pedro was still pretty good.
However, their bullpen was not. After we gave up another run by Esteban (Oh NO) Yan in the 8th on a home run, we stormed back in the bottom of the eighth. We scored 3 times to make the score 5-4. That was capped by a two run home run by Juan Gonzalez, and we had two on with two outs. Kevin Mench hit what looked like a liner to left, but it didn’t hook quite enough, and we were out. We almost won it again in the bottom of the 8th. Arod was on first with two outs after having reached there on a fielder’s choice after BARELY beating out a double play ball.
Raffy jacked one to right field, and it died about 3 feet from the fence. We had a total of three balls that missed home runs by a few feet each. Blalock, Raffy, & I forget who else had one, but if we had the usual Texas wind, we would have had probably about 4 or 5 more runs, and won the game.
Carl Everett had another really nice play in left to take away a double – his being named AL Player of the Week seems to be carrying over so far into this week. :)

A nice game – one I wish we’d see more often, although it’s already happened more this season than I thought it would. :)
Great pitching – we only gave up two runs with Colby Lewis getting his third (!) victory of the season already. Our bullpen didn’t give up anything, and Urbina got his seventh save already. Really nice to see.
On the other side, the A’s pitching was also great, only allowing two, but since it was more than the A’s got, we won. We should have had a ton more, as we left something like 15 guys on base all night – should have had at least ten runs. However, Carl Everett’s home run (he’s had about 500 this week it seems) was the difference maker.
Nice to come home on a win, although the next game is Chan Ho Park vs. Pedro Martinez. That doesn’t look good. :(

Ugh.

What more needs to be said about this one? Barry Zito dominated. Totally.

Again, no time to update – finishing up a project this week at work. Nice to take 3 out of 4 from the World Champs. Should have been a sweep, though.

Again, no time to update – finishing up a project this week at work. A frustrating loss. We were up, and had a big bullpen meltdown. :(