Ugh. In the first two innings, I felt like we were going to have a good second half of spring training. That died in the third inning. We went into the third up 6 to nothing. We left the top of the third losing 7-6. Then after the fourth, we were losing 9-7. Only two runs, and 5 more innings to play at that point, but it just felt bad. I did listen to this game over MLB.com’s Gameday Audio on the A’s feed. Was nice of them to have Eric Nadel & Victor Rojas on there as guests, and they made a couple of shoutouts to “Ranger fans listening”. Nice of them to be cognizant of that issue.
Anyway, in listening it felt like there wasn’t any pitching at all in the game. It was hit after hit after run scored, etc.. Total of 24 runs and 25 hits between the two teams – not much good pitching going on. In fact, Ron Mahay was the only real bright spot for us pitching wise, going two innings and giving up no hits, and no walks. Wes Littleton only pitched .1 of an inning and he didn’t give up anything, but that doesn’t really count, IMO. The other guys (Regilio, Hughes, & Bukvich) just stunk up the place.
Offensively, it was nice to see a couple of home runs from Sandy Alomar (that still seems weird talking about him as a Ranger), and Laynce Nix, who needs to turn it around in a hurry to keep from losing his starting job to Gary Matthews, who in my opinon has earned it. Scary moment in the first inning though as Teixeira got plunked with a pitch, and came out of the game after trying to stay in. It didn’t sound good listening to the game, and on Wednesday it doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal, but still – you never want to see that to one of your better players.
We’re awfully close to having the worst record in the majors during spring training. We’re already the worst in Cactus League play. We’re 6-14 (.300), and the next worst are the Royals at 7-11 (.400), and two games ahead of us. Over in Grapefruit League play, only the Marlins have a worse record than us at 6-15 (.295), but we’re pretty close to falling below them. :(
You can view my full update for this game here.