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Earlier in the day, my wife asked me who was pitching. I replied with “Chan Ho Park”, to which she said “Oh boy, there’s a loss”. And after the first couple of innings, oh boy did I think that was true. Chan Ho Park walked something like 5 batters in the first two innings – including the first seven pitches of the game for a ball! However, due to some luck, and an awesome fielding play by Carl Everett in left, Chan Ho escaped unscathed. The Mariners (without Edgar Martinez, I might add) left the bases loaded in the first two innings. Chan Ho ended up going 5 innings, walking 7 and throwing 114 pitches all told. Boy did he luck out in getting the win tonight. CJ Nitkowski gave up the other run, and Cordero & Urbina were lights out again – something nice to see. If I had to categorize this pitching performance by Park, it’s “lucky”.
Fourth save for Urbina. Assuming he stays the entire season, and isn’t traded in July, at this rate, he might beat the team record for saves in a season.
On the other side of the ball, Rafael Palmeiro continued his apparent love of Safeco Field with a big two run jack in the 5th inning to right center field. At the time, that gave us the lead in the game, and we never gave it up again. The only other RBI (one run wasn’t credited as such) was by Carl Everett, who had a nice game overall.
I have to say, a very surprising win. I certainly wasn’t expecting a win when Chan Ho went into Seattle, and I’m still pretty down on him, but it was very nice to get.

The game started off ugly – like just about every game so far this year. Colby Lewis walked 8 batters in his 3.2 innings of work. Far too many. However, the bullpen was great. In the bullpens 5.1 innings, they pitched shutout ball, giving up just two hits – both by Yan. Fultz, Cordero, & Urbina gave up squat. And speaking of Urbina, he has three saves. We have three wins so far.
On the other side, unfortunately, four of our five runs came off the longball. While it’s nice to see homeruns, I’m a bit worried that such a radically high percentage of our total runs scored are that way. It seems that if we don’t hit home runs, we’re not winning – I don’t like that trend. Still, Mark Teixeira hit his first major league home run, scoring three. And Carl Everett hit a solo home run in the bottom of the 8th to win the game.
Overall, a great comeback win – great pitching from our bullpen. Makes me wish I was there. :)

This one was more annoying than the 2-1 loss yesterday. Not for the obvious reason that we lost by giving up 10+ runs. My point is that Ismael Valdes was brilliant the first three innings. Even the two home runs he gave up in the third didn’t feel like a big deal at all, since he was pitching well otherwise. Then the floodgates opened up.
On the positive side, Mark Teixeira finally got his first major league hit (a double), and his first RBI (a single driving in Todd Greene). Juan Gonzalez had another home run, as did Raffy (his 493rd).
I knew this season wouldn’t be that great going in, but damn – it’s annoying to be disenfranchised this early in the season. I wonder how Twins fans dealt with it all those years.

John Thomson looked like a pitcher that could win 20 games last night. Unfortunately, a pitcher that DID win 23 games last year was his opponent. Zito was masterful, his only mistake was a longball to Rafael Palmeiro. It’s our lot. Whenever we get a great pitching performance, we always seem to get outpitched by someone better.
We had a total of 5 hits (two of them by Mike Young, our “weak” offensive second baseman). Overall, it was a great BASEBALL game, but not a great Rangers game. :(
Of course, anything’s better than what Chan Ho Park has been doing. :)

Didn’t watch any of this game, for two reasons.
1) As my brother was still in town, I was out doing some things with him.
2) Chan Ho Park was pitching. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time getting up for his games anymore.

I went to Opening Day on Friday, and I also went to Opening Night on Saturday. I actually spent most of this game worrying about the weather, especially when I was in the bathroom and heard “Tornado touchdown” over the radio. Anyway, it turned out to be fine other than some heavy winds, and the Rangers got out the big bats. In the early trend of the season, the longball provided just about all the offense in the game. 7 of the 8 were off a home run. We had four of them – two by Juan Gonzalez, the others by Arod, and one by Hank Blalock. All of them were no doubters, too. Probably helped a bit by the wind, but eh? :)
Colby Lewis wasn’t spectacular, but he was serviceable, and this year that will be more than good enough, I think. I enjoyed being at the ballpark again, and I have to say that my pitching fantasies were dashed early on this season, I suspect we’ll still play well, despite that. I do wish we were a bit less dependant on the longball, though – even if chicks dig ’em. :)

There never is quite anything like opening day, is there? Even if you lose (which we did), there’s something nice about visiting the park again for a game. :)
It was also a special day for me because my brother was visiting in from out of town. I picked him up at the airport at 10:30, and we headed straight to the ballpark. Got there early, took in the sights of the new things at the park. The new scoreboards were gorgeous, much better than before – the mats outside the stadium were a tad gimmicky, but still OK, the banners of players were nice, although I would have liked them not to have the Donruss logo on them. The food stand signage is new and a needed improvement. The concourses seem less cluttered, but the frickin “Sign up for a credit card and get a towel” people REALLY NEED TO GO. I didn’t find the famed garlic fries, so I’ll have to try them the next time I’m out there. I even thought the Rangers mascot was cute. I’m not one of these baseball zealots (like on some web forums) who think that anything that deviates from their perceived “mantra of baseball” is bad. I even thought the Ranger Captain was cool. Overall, a definite improvement – but the best “new” thing about the Ballpark was the return of Chuck Morgan. Games go so much better with him there – it really was painful at times last year without him.
The game? Well, we lost. Ismael Valdes looked pretty decent again, if not spectacular. All our offense came from home runs again (one by Blalock, one by Sierra). Was a nice back and forth game which we lost, but my excitement at being at the Ballpark again really overshadowed the game. Even the sunburn I got was no big deal. Seeing friends again (Hi Tina!) was really nice.

Is game 3 of the season too quick to totally give up on our pitching staff? :) This was ugly – even worse than last night’s game. We gave up 21 runs to the Angels in two games – blech. I bet you if we could bring Nolan Ryan out of retirement (his last season was TEN years ago now), he’d probably be as good or better than what we have. John Thomson, who I thought looked good most of his outing, gave up 6 in 4.1 innings. Fultz gave up two more in less than an inning, Garcia gave up one, and Jay Powell gave up one. The only pitcher who was good was Cordero who gave up nothing in his inning of work.
Doug Glanville continues his early season good form, going 3 for 5 with a home run, as well as some fine defensive play. He’s also got an OBP of .429 and a slugging percentage of .615 at the moment – if he keeps this up, he’ll be an absolute steal at the price we paid for him.
The story of the night was Arod’s 300th home run. He now became the youngest all time to reach 300 home runs – breaking the previous record held by Jimmy Foxx by about 80-90 days or so. Was also nice he got the ball thrown back by some doofus in the stands (they called him Nimrod on the TV). Also, Raffy got #491 last night too – his first (and so far only) hit of the season.
Anyway, for some reason, this 1-2 start seems depressing, because it shows just how weak our pitching staff is – I have a feeling it will be a long season. :(

Well, I guess the only good thing you could say about this game is that you didn’t get to see the stupid rally monkey. Even only 2 games into 162, these midnight games when we get blown out 10-0 are hard to watch. There goes matching the 72 Dolphins with an unbeaten record. ;)
Chan Ho Park reverted to the form he had before the final three starts and most of last season. There goes the Chad Kreuter theory. I didn’t buy into that, anyway. Just makes me feel even worse about his season, as his ERA is now over TWENTY! :( (CJ Nitkowski’s is over TEN too after just this game).
Offensively, there’s little to talk about, except we left a ton of people (5 in the first two innings) on base in the first two innings. If we had scored any of them, one never knows how much it might have changed the outlook of the game. It was kind of nice to see the setup for Mark Teixeira in his first major league at bat with the bases loaded. I had visions there – as I’m sure most everyone (including Teixeira, too) did. Oh well, I’m sure he’ll do fine in time.

OK, I hate the Rally Monkey. It was cute when it was just a jumping monkey on the Angels’ Jumbotron. But now it’s a stupid commercialized piece of crap – the commercial they showed on ESPN really irritated me – and I except I’ll hate it more once they hand out their Rally Monkey bobble head later this year in Anaheim. :(
We start the season and the Showalter regime with a win Sunday night in Anaheim against the defending world Series champions. The 6-3 win was fueled by three longballs – two by usual suspects (Arod & Gonzalez) and the third by Mike Young. Young’s was the turning point in the game, we were down 2-1 at that point, and we went up 4-2, and never looked back after that point. I also liked Mike Young’s home run as a big middle finger to “My second baseman must have godzilla like offensive numbers” GM John Hart. Mike Young is the best thing we’ve had come along in ages, and to mess with him like this really bothers me.
Anyway, we also got decent pitching too – although I’m not sure why Valdes was pulled after five innings and 65 odd pitches. Our pen was great, giving up no runs, and only a couple hits over four innings. Newcomer Aaron Fultz looked great, and Cordero & Urbina were both lights out.
It’s only one game, but it’s something to enjoy – I was ready for a real baseball game after playing several games of World Series Baseball 2K3 on my Xbox earlier in the day, driving around to several bookstores in Dallas to find a copy of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram so I could get their (far better than the Dallas paper) baseball preview section, watching the Rangers/Astros preview show from Fox Sports Southwest that was on my TiVo from Friday evening, watching the 90 minute Baseball Tonight show. :)
My wife said now that baseball season is started again, that I will be a happier person. I’m not sure I like the implications that I’m an unhappy person during the offseason, but baseball season HAS started again. :)