For eight innings, the Rangers were completely closed out of this game offensively. Cleveland pitcher Fausto Carmona tossed eight brilliant innings, giving up no runs on three hits with three walks and seven strikeouts. Was an outstanding performance. Not much else you can say about that.
Brandon McCarthy wasn’t too bad either, although he was nowhere in the league that Carmona was. Brandon tossed 5.2 innings, giving up the three runs the Indians got (two came on a home run to Travis Hafner). He walked three, struck out four, but still had too high a pitch count (100 in his 5.2 IP). But not all that awful, either. Problem again was Carmona.
Our bullpen, a strength this season, was good again. Wilson, Benoit, & Feldman all tossed scoreless innings, allowing just three hits combined (and one walk). That was a good outing for the Rangers pen. Perhaps they had a good outing at the rectangular table before that. ;)
We did make some noise in the botom of the ninth against Cleveland closer Joe Borowski. We scored two unearned runs on a few miscues by Cleveland. It just “felt” like they were trying to hand us the game. However, we couldn’t finish off the job, and left the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, after scoring two and then loading them up. Oh well.