Usually, when the Rangers are going up against Barry Zito, it means a loss. This game is no different. We lost to Barry Zito. Except for a short moment of wildness in the bottom of the sixth, he was pretty untouchable. If you take out the events of the bottom of the sixth, Zito’s line would be: 7.1IP, 3H, 0ER, 2BB, 7K. A pretty impressive line. Howerver, in the bottom of the sixth, Zito hit Teixeira, walked Blalock, and then gave up a three run home run to Phil Nevin. Other than that, Zito didn’t allow much at all. His actual line was 7.1IP, 4H, 3ER, 3BB, 7K. It felt way more impressive than his real line indicates. Zito was also helped out by some sparkling defense by Eric Chavez, who made some really REALLY impressive plays at third, and probably helped out Zito’s line.
Kameron Loe on the other hand was not impressive. He didn’t stink up the joint, but he left a lot of pitches up, and gave up way too many hits. Loe went just 5.2IP, but gave up eleven hits in all, walking 2, striking out two. He also gave up 6 runs, although 2 were unearned. That was generous I thought, because the play in question didn’t really look like a Blalock error, I thought it was a double, and it initially was ruled that, but was changed inbetween innings to an error, giving Loe just 4ER instead of 6. I’m sure Jay Payton didn’t appreciate that.
Our bullpen was quite good, going a total of 3.1 innings of shutoutball. Four relievers (Wilson, Feldman, Mahay, Bauer) combined for just one hit (Bauer in the 9th) with 2K and 2BB.
However, due to the generally bad Oakland bullpen, Ken Macha left Zito out there as long as he could. Zito, who finally ran out of gas in the 8th after going 7.1 innings with 126 pitches gave way to Houston Street, who tonight acted like the closer, and only gave up a total of one hit in his 1.2 inning save.
The way Loe was pitching, it felt like it could have been a whole lot worse. I credit Zito for this game’s outcome moreso than anything else that happened.
I wonder what that guy in the first row of Section 323 with the giant Rangers flag, and snakes all over the place thought of this? I sat behind him for a bit at last night’s game, and assumed he was the Kam’s Snake Pit guy, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Assuming that was him, I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled with the way Loe pitched tonight.
referring back to yesterday’s post about gimmicks and glitches about getting cheap seats…i went to the game tonight and in the 1st couple of innings a thing went on on the screen that said “text ‘rangers’ to 42943 for a chance to win a free porcelin doll…retail value of $20” well of course this is nothing compared to the free ticket for game 4 they were giving away at game 3 (if you text “blah blah”)of the mavs vs. spurs game last week
or is it?
well my brother texts it anyways since he has unlimited texting(my phone can only receive texts) and an inning later he gets a text back saying “sorry, you did not win…but please come by the kiosk in front of section 25 to redeem your FREE TICKET VOUCHER for one of the upcoming mariners games” so then we get to thinking about it…and we tried to get 2 for the price of one…my brother forwarded the message to me and we both went up to the kiosk and instead of getting two free tickets to one of the mariners games this upcoming week (minumum ticket value of $29.00)…we got four!
and also on parking, i’m sure this is commonly known…if your a regular to the games but not a season pass holder, buy a six flags parking season pass and it pays off withing 3 or 4 visits and it’s RIGHT next to the park…not much of a walk at all