Rangerfans.com

CJ Wilson battled this game, but couldn’t match the effort of his last outing. He went seven plus innings, allowing just two hits, but oddly enough five runs. The reason for that odd number discrepancy is that he allowed five walks. Additionally, he left the game with two men on base, and they both scored, thanks to Ryan Tucker. Anyway, CJ only had two strikeouts, and 109 pitches through 7+ innings. He certainly didn’t have the command he did last time. The hits weren’t a problem, but he walked too many, struck out too few. That all adds up to “not great command”, which is what did him in.
Not only did Tucker allow two of CJ’s inherited runners to score, he allowed two of his own. He didn’t get anyone out, faced four batters. The four batters went walk, single, double, walk. This was after CJ started the inning with a hit batter and a walk. Six straight guys reaching base like that will never be good news if you’re the team in the field when it happens.
Brett Tomko came in and put out the fire, throwing two scoreless innings. In fact, they’d be perfect, but he walked one guy. So that was a good ending.
However, the Rangers couldn’t push any runs across to win the thing. In fact, after the seventh, we had just one unearned run score.
But Mitch Moreland had another home run! That’s gotta count for something, eh? At least made the girls run around on Greene’s hill. :)

As is my policy for the last few years, I do not write about losses to the Yankees.

Michael Young rocked the Yankees this game. He went a perfect 4-4 – one of which was a home run. The others were singles, but Young was batting 1.000 this game. He also drove in two, and scored on the home run ball (obviously). It raised his batting average to .348, and he’s by far the best hitter on the team at the moment.
Not too far behind him this game was Mitch Moreland, who went 3-4 with a double, scoring twice. David Murphy & Julio Borbon also got two hits. The offense finally clicked pretty good this game. 14 hits in all, just two walks from the Yanks. Was a good spread out offense.
Only one of the starting nine took an ofer. That’s Ian Kinsler, who seems to be reverting back to his “Capt. Uppercut” persona. I hear the stuff about he’s trying hard not to, but man – everything is up. Hits and outs. Hard to think anything otherwise.
Derek Holland is starting to look like the guy who will come out of the rotation whenever one of our other guys is ready to come back. He startd out of the gate good, but has hit quite a rough patch here recently. I don’t think we need to sit him down just yet, but this outing wasn’t good, either. Three innings pitched, 4 hits, FIVE walks, four earned runs. And 77 pitches over three innings. Bah. Not good at all.
Still, a win is a win, made that much better than it’s over the Yankees.

As is my policy for the last few years, I do not write about losses to the Yankees.

Familiar ring for the offense. One double, five singles, three walks. Just one run. Not much to talk about there.
On the other side, a former Ranger pretty much carried Seattle this game. Justin Smoak went 3-4 with a solo home run.
That’s pretty much the big bullet points to this game.
Oh, and Colby Lewis had his hard luck from last year crop up again. He pitched a complete game loss. Looked pretty good. Eight innings, eight hits, one walk, eleven strikeouts, three runs. He had a good outing, but our offense was stuck in the mud – yet again.

A few days ago, I wrote that Felix Hernandez is the only real pitcher the Mariners have at the moment. To some extent that’s right, but the kid that Seattle ran out there for this game looked quite good. Michael Pineda reminds me a lot of the old Astros pitcher, JR Richard. This kid looked big and powerful. He’s not there yet, but if he puts it together in the next few years, Seattle will have a hell of a 1-2 punch. Kid looked good.
Fortunately, CJ Wilson was better NOW. CJ struck out 12 on his way to a complete game win. Nine innings, six hits, one walk, 12 k’s, and just two runs – one being unearned. He looked good. Threw 125 pitches over the 9 innings, which is under the average for nine innings pitched, so that’s good too. He looks like he’s starting to come on, which is good. Colby Lewis looks like he may have figured it out now too. We just need our offense to get healthy, and we’ll be OK.
Offensively, we had some home runs this game. The duo of Mitch Moreland & Chris Davis supplied the power this game. Adrian Beltre also doubled, and there were a few more singles. No player had more than one hit this game, with just Kinsler & Torrealba taking an ofer.
Be nice if we can string half a dozen of these W’s together in a row.

As if it wasn’t bad enough being pushed around in Oakland, at least there’s an excuse there. They have some darn good pitching. Seattle has Felix Hernandez, and that’s it. As I sit here to write a few words about this game, all I can think of is Jim Mora’s old “Playoffs?!?” speech..

Alexi Ogando started this one. Wasn’t too bad. Six innings, just five hits and a run. Pitch count was a smidge high (102), but not totally outrageous. Pedro Strop though, stunk up the joint. Blown save, loss. He allowed the other three runs the Mariners scored. So this was a failure of the bullpen. An all too common occurance this season so far. :(
Again. One double. Four singles. That’s it.

Those who know me know I don’t write about losses to the Yankees. Those same people should also know I don’t like playing 10 inning games. 14-15, or even longer – no problem. But 10? Hate them. We lose most of them. This was another for that pile.
Darren Oliver faced one batter in the bottom. Hideki Matsui. On the second pitch – bam. Home run, game over, walkoff for the A’s.
Our offense was still in low gear. Two doubles, six singles. Six walks helped, but we still couldn’t plate enough to win the game. The last time we were in Oakland before this it was great. We won the division. This time, not so much – we fell out of first place.

Matt Harrison had an awful outing. He was gone before the second inning was over. Six hits, two walks, four earned runs in just 1.2 innings. It could have been worse, but Matt got a pickoff play, which helped keep it to what it was. Matt Bush followed that mess and gave up three runs himself, but just one earned. The three errors the Rangers committed had a lot to do with that.
Andrus & Kinsler doubled. All the rest were singles. But unless they came back to win (they didn’t), that mess by Harrison pretty much doomed the feeling of the game.