Here’s an image I haven’t been able to break out in awhile; my sweep image. But it was a good sweep, as it was four games against an opponent inside our own division. This is always good. Now it was just the Mariners, who were behind us, but it’s always good to put some room between you and anyone in your division. Although I don’t think anyone’s worried about the Pittsburgh Pirates or Kansas City Royals sneaking up on them in the standings. Mariners are a little closer than that, so four games helps.
Behind a freshly shaven Kevin Millwood, the Rangers gave up a two spot in the second, but took the lead back straight away with a 3 run bottom of the inning. This was fueled by a bases loaded double by Gary Matthews (who was thrown out trying to strech it into a triple). But it was enough to give us the lead. Millwood gave up another run in the top of the third on a sac fly, but that’s all he would give up for the game.
After that we got to Felix Hernandez for three more in the bottom of the fifth, and after another in the bottom of the sixth on a wild pitch, Felix was gone. However, that wasn’t it. We scored again in the seventh and eighth to widen our lead to 9-3.
Rick Bauer, who seemed a lock awhile back to have the 8th inning setup role has become shaky lately. He gave up three more runs in his 1.2 innings of work. In fact, I think I remember seeing Aki get up becaue of Bauer’s performance. But we got the win, and the sweep, no matter how rocky the 9th looked.
We had five more doubles as a team to load on top of our massive mound of them this year. Mike Young had a triple. Nobody had a home run. But Millwood went 6 and got a win.
More imprortantly we’ve shown we can handle the Mariners, which will be helpful as we go down the stretch.