One of the other young pitchers for Kansas City stepped up and kept the Rangers mostly in check. It wasn’t a dominating performance, but Luke Hochevar went seven innings, gave up three runs on five hits. One of the runs was unearned, but the big deal with him was that of the 21 outs he recorded, 13 of them were strikeouts. The Ranger bats were definitely flailing against Mr. Luke. Whether or not he was helped by the strike zone? Well, that’s a job for Questec. :)
Anyway, it didn’t stop there. Joaquim Soria got a two inning save, and of his six outs, three of them were strikeouts. So that was sixteen strikeouts by Ranger batters. We had three guys (Hamilton, Jones, Blalock) who struck out three times each. Three more guys (Cruz, Teagarden, Vizquel) who struck out twice. Marlon Byrd also jumped in the pool once. Only Ian Kinsler & Michael Young did not strike out. That was pretty ugly up there.
Offensively, the big deal for us was a first inning home run by Michael Young. That’s about it. In fact, Michael Young had three of our six hits. He pretty much *WAS* the offense. Nelson Cruz had a double, and there were singles by Blalock & Byrd.
Derek Holland was meh. 4.2 innings, seven hits, four earned runs. Actually, “meh” is too good for that. He was “Mark Clark”.
Not a good night for us. But so far it’s better than recent years in Kansas City have been this series. Normally we would have lost all the games, so 1-1 after two is an improvement.