After the first two games of the series, I was feeling pretty good about our team vs the Mariners. But then I remembered that Edinson Volquez was pitching. Now I don’t have anything against Volzquez – he’s a wonderful talent. In the minor leagues. While he’s shown flashes of brilliance in the majors, he’s not had the same kind of success up here – yet.
So I wasn’t expecting a lot when he took the mound Saturday night. He proved me wrong, going seven innings, giving up no runs on just four hits. He did walk three, so it wasn’t as “crisp” as that line showed. But you can’t argue with seven innings of shutout ball. Benoit came in and stunk up the joint – all four runs the Ms have were on his ledger. Bauer & Otsuka had zeroes up there, which kept it a win for the Rangers. But Volquez had a great outing, something that I agree with Mike Hindman on.. It didn’t get a lot of coverage locally.
Offensively, we continued our pile of extra base hits. We got doubles from Gary Matthews & Ian Kinsler. We got home runs from Gary Matthews & Gerald Laird. We had 12 hits in all, so most of them were just singles. Tex was 3-3, Matthews was 2-4, Laird was 2-3. Was a fairly balanced attack. Seven of our nine starters got at least one hit (Blalock & Cruz did not).
There was a 20 minute rain delay in this one. I did not go to the game – I didn’t miss the rain, I hate rain delays. I would have liked to have seen the 1996 “reunion”, however.
Still, we go into Sunday with the possibility of doing something we haven’t done in ages, that being sweep a team in a four game series.