Aaron Sele notched his 18th win of the year (one less than last season) today with a bombing of the Oakland A’s. There was much doubt coming into this game whether or not the Rangers had “lost it”. We had a really bad funk against a bunch of teams we should have crushed. We lost most of those games, and some (myself too I admit) were wondering if the Rangers were just going to back into the playoffs with no spirit. That was certainly answered with a vengeance tonight!
Sele pitched very well, allowing only 1 run (unearned) over 7 innings and allowing only 5 hits. He looked again to be our best pitcher this year, and that worries me a bit, as he only signed a 1 year deal after last season, and is our highest paid pitcher. I really hope we make a big effort to resign him for 2000 (and possibly 01 and 02, too), otherwise we’ll have even more pitching problems in the off season.
It was a fairly quiet game through the first four and a half innings. The A’s had scored an unearned run in the top of the second, but that was it until we broke through in the bottom of the fifth. We busted out with four runs that inning, capped by a Juan Gonzalez two run home run. That was nice, but not as nice as what happened in the 6th. After putting the A’s down, we went back out on offense in a big way by hitting two more two run home runs (one by Royce Clayton, and a second one by Juan Gonzalez). That put us up 10-1, and pretty much that was the game. We scored one more run in each of the 7th and 8th innings, and Oakland scored 3 in the final two frames, but the game was over after the sixth. One of these other runs was a third home run by Juan Gonzalez, the first time he’s had a 3 home run game since 1993 – 6 years ago! It was awesome to watch – Juan even came out of the dugout to wave to the fans.
A great start to this series, winning 12-4. Perhaps Rafael Palmeiro’s little speech got the team going. Doesn’t matter what got them going, they got it going! :)