This is the kind of game that Ron Washington has said he loves to see. Well pitched, close, and a more traditional kind of game than the slugfest, no pitching contests we seem to still get into way too much year after year.
It started with Vicente Padilla, who looked a lot like the 2006 version of himself, not the guy who has been wearing #44 most of the year in 2007. Padilla went 6, giving up no runs on just two hits. He walked two and struck out five. Only tossed ninety balls – probably could have gone more, not sure why he came out when he did. Wes Littleton followed, and wasn’t as good, going less than an inning (0.2), and giving up the two KC runs on a home run ball hit by John Buck, the KC catcher. Littleton was followed by Bill White, the surprising September callup, who made his major league debut this game, going 0.2 innings, striking out one, and giving up one hit. But no runs. A nice performance for Bill. Ranger pitching was closed down by Jamey Wright, and Joaquin Benoit, who got the save. Rather well pitched game in all. Nine innings, six hits, two runs, two walks, seven strikeouts. Nice combined line.
The Rangers didn’t have a lot of offense either, but got it when it counted. In all we had just six hits, and all were singles, except one. Catalanotto had one, Young had two, Wilkerson had one, and Blalock had two. Blalock had the only non single hit; a double.
As Wash likes, a nice low scoring game that the Rangers cam out on top of.