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When I watched a game earlier in the spring training season, there was a TV interview with Matt Harrison, talking about how he’s changed his approach, how he approaches things much differently now. It seems to have come out well, as Matt had another good outing.
Six innings, six hits, three walks, and three earned runs. Not dominant, but _technically_ a quality start. 86 pitches. Well, OK – we’re not winning Cy Young here with that performance, but it’s better than what he’s been in the past, and you just have that “gut feeling” that he’ll do OK this season. Or at least I do.
However, Arthur Rhodes was this game’s winner of the “big pile of stink” award. One inning, two hots, one walk, yet FOUR earned runs. Bah.
Darren Oliver was the only guy who didn’t give up any runs.
Alexi Ogando, who had gotten brief talk as replacing Feliz as closer gave up a run.
Five doubles and Nine singles. That was our offense.
Julio Borbon didn’t have any errors, but then he didn’t play, either. Michael Young made an error at first.
Not exactly tearing it up as we head into the last week of spring training here, guys.

The game won’t be made up, either. Will be a big break as Tuesday was a scheduled day off.
We’re now ten days away from the home opener. No major cuts have been made yet – just guys you’d expect to be sent down. Should be getting some big moves shortly, I would think.

I got to watch all this game. Scored it, too. I also used my spring training cheat by ignoring the substitutions that the Royals made (except for the pitchers). The Rangers subs I kept up with, but I’ll be glad when the starting nine is the ending nine. Makes scoring a whole lot easier.
Derek Holland put an end to the week of bad pitching. He went out there and dominated, except for one or two blips. Five innings, gave up five hits, and no earned runs (one unearned). Struck out three, and his command looked pretty good. Not as totally dominating as Cliff Lee’s kind of stuff can be, but man, he looked good. If he does this for the rest of the spring (what, two more starts), he’ll probably be a lock to start in the rotation.
The only other pitcher Texas ran out was Brett Tomko, who got a four inning save. He gave up just one run on four hits and a couple of walks in that time. I was surprised he kept coming out – especially the last inning. I thought they’d give one of the possible closer guys a shot at one.
The first runs of the game came in the fourth by an opposite field two run home run by Mitch Moreland, who will probably be the regular first baseman.
Suddenly the poster boy for dropped balls (Julio Borbon) had the most hits of anyone – three. All singles. Mitch Moreland had a single to go with his home run for his two. Everyone else had just one.
Overall, it was a fairly well pitched game. Not dominant overall, but the numbers aren’t ugly. I was just glad I got to watch the whole game. I’ve missed a ton of games this spring, which is unusual.
Got our first look at one of the “regular” lineups we might be seeing out there. Didn’t look too bad.

I didn’t get to see or hear any of this game, as I was busy doing some family stuff. Probably a good thing I didn’t, as I would have gotten mad at it. I’ve written many times about how I don’t like ten inning games, we usually lose them. More than 10? I’m all for it, but games that last exactly ten we seem to lose all the time.
The Rangers were up 6-2 going into the eighth. The M’s tied it, 6-6. We went up 8-6, then they tied it again to send it to 10. Scored one in the 10th? Of course, game over.
Bah.
Feliz started the game, went five. Wasn’t too bad – four hits, two hits and two earned runs.
Darren O’Day was pretty awful – four hits, four earned runs in one inning.
Pedro Strop gave up a couple, as did one by Miller, but they’re not making the roster, so that doesn’t so much matter to me.
Couple of home runs for the Rangers by guys who also aren’t making the 25 man roster. Those being Kevin Cash & Omar Quintanilla.
Bah.
Sigh.
Any number of those words you want to sub in there (for words that look like @$%)@$^) usually) are fine here.

This has been a BAD week for pitching. The numbers combined were so awful, it makes me feel completely bad about the entire bullpen. I’m sure a lot of it is just spring training stuff, but you always want your guys to be better than worse in spring.
Matt Harrison got bombed (well, not super bombed, but enough), and so did Cody Eppley. Eppley’s since been sent down (I’m writing this 4 days after the game happened). Mark Lowe also got bombed. Darren Oliver & Zack Jackson didn’t give up any (earned) runs, and Jackson’s been sent down as well.
Harrison gave up four hits and four walks for four earned runs in four innings. His strikeouts and home runs allowed totaled four as well. Not that it’s a relevant stat (or a real one) at all, but I ran out of fours to use for him. Oh, the icing is he had two wild pitches, too. Bad outing.
Cody Eppley gave up two hits and two walks for three earned runs in his ONE inning.
Mark Lowe gave up three hits and two walks for four earned runs in his ONE inning.
Mr Yuck, indeed.
We were actually in the lead after three innings (4-3), but that didn’t last. Our offense was fairly scattered. Two guys (Murphy, Tracy) had two hits, everyone else had one. However, Elvis Andrus’ one was a good one – a home run. Something he hasn’t done in bloody ages. David Murphy also had a double.
Six runs isn’t anything to sneeze at, but when the pitching coughs up that many, you just want to hang your head and scream “Put in the Horse!”

Last night I didn’t get to start watching the game until late. It started at 9PM anyway, and I wasn’t clear to watch baseball until about 10:30. Checked on a few online msgs before going to watch the game, and a friend of mine had posted this as his Facebook status:

I forgot the Ranger game was on TV. I think I’ll check in and….ooooooohhhhhhh no.

That irritated me, as I don’t like reading updates before I get to see the games, as I usually watch them time shifted (Thank you, TiVo). Granted, it’s my own fault for looking, but still. So anyway, I took that comment to mean we were losing bad. Tuned in, and it was 12-0. I tuned right back out, and went to play some MLB 2k11 on my Xbox 360.
In a story about the game, Ron Washington said,

“Full moon,” manager Ron Washington said. “It seems like we left our gloves, bats and brains at home. We just had a bad night.”

I’ll go further than that. IT SUCKED! No good came of this game at all. The thumbs down image I used for the last game doesn’t cut it. Time to haul out “Mr. Yuck”…

Chris Davis’ grand slam was cool, though.

I only saw part of this game, and I missed the end, as I was recovering from being sick. Couldn’t stay awake to watch it. Good thing I didn’t, otherwise I would have gotten mad and it would have woken me up when I needed to sleep.

Adrian Beltre & Chris Davis had good games. That’s about it for this game. :)

Bah.