Well, we gave up on Fabio Castro yesterday, as the Rule 5 pick was designated for assignment to make room for Robinson Tejeda who started on Saturday. Tejeda was lit up – BIG TIME, and is supposed to be sent back out again today before Sunday afternoon’s game starts. That sequence of events kind of reminds me on how we lost Doug Davis to a roster squeeze a couple of years ago, actually.
Anyway, Tejeda just plain stunk up the joint. He gave up a big old ugly 6 spot in the bottom of the first inning. We never quite recovered from that. In all Tejeda gave up two singles, two walks, a double, and then a three run home run to cap it all off. In fact, probably the only reason it wasn’t worse was that Tejeda struck out the pitcher to end the inning.
And then it rained – which prompted a very funny story from Tom Grieve about his time in the minors around 1970 or so in Colorado when a tarp blew up and into the stands. That was a great story by Tom. Watching the Rockies guys struggling with the wind reminds me of that now classic footage from the 1993 Fla Marlins season when they had some serious tarp issues.
Anyway, when we came back from the rain delay, I was supriginsly still watching. Tejeda was sent back out, and gave up another run in the second inning for a total of 7. Tejeda actually went three innings total, giving up 7ER on 7H, 3BB, and 2 HR. Not good. Not good at all. I bet there’s a lot of Ranger fans right now that wish we still had David Dellucci. In fact, I bet Dellucci still wishes that, given how little playing time he’s gotten in Philly.
We actually tried to make a game of it in the middle innings. After four innings, we were down 9-1. We picked up a four spot, to make it 9-5, and the momentum seemed to back on our side. However, Jack Benoit gave up two runs in the bottom of the 6th to make it 11-5, and that was it for the scoring for the rest of the game, save for a solo home run by Mark Teixeira in the 9th inning to make it 11-6.
It felt like we tried to come back, but when Benoit couldn’t keep ’em off the board, we lost what little momentum we had. The game really seemed out of reach after the first inning, however. I’m surprised I watched the entire game, I usually give up on games like that, and do something else, but this time I stuck with it. :)