The Rangers won a game that was delayed rather a lot in the middle by rain. Something like two and a half hours. To be honest, I didn’t watch most of the game. It was on, but I was caught up in trade deadline discussions, so while the game was on, I was flipping between the Rangers game, and the talk on MLB Network as well as Baseball Tonight. I was a trade deadline junkie this day. :)
Vicente “Swine Flu” Padilla started the game for Texas, and went six. Six hits, three earned runs. One of those “technical quality starts” (as I call ’em). He was OK. Gave up a two run home run in the first inning, which is where most of the runs he gave up came from. That was the only power he gave up – the other five hits were all singles. Jose Lopez had the home run, and had three of the nine Seattle hits.
Offensively, Taylor Teagarden had a solo home run in the fifth. I point that out first, because he just missed a grand slam in the second (or third). Hit to the track, was an off the end of the bat shot – he “just” missed it. Darnit. Marlon Byrd however, made up for that with a three run shot in the bottom of the fifth. This was well timed, because at this point, it was obvious there was going to be a major rain delay.
And yeah. I was sitting at home. By myself. And I did the birdman flap. I’m such a dork.
Anyway, as the wind started blowing around and we were being treated to multiple shots of trash cyclones around the park, the rain started coming down. In the middle of a Michael Young at bat in the seventh, with the count 3-2, they couldn’t take it, and called a rain delay. The rain delay was interesting for a couple of counts. I got to watch one of the “Under the Lights” episodes. The one with the travel in New York & Boston. I hadn’t seen that one before, so I enjoyed that. They also showed the fireworks show on TV, as they shot ’em off during the rain delay. That’s happened to be before. Some years ago I was there for a July 4th game, and there was a three and a half hour rain delay, and they shot off the fireworks in the middle. Something about curfew on fireworks.
Anyway, when the game started again, Michael Young took one pitch for a ball, and walked. But we had no more offense after the rain delay. In fact, Byrd’s home run sealed the scoring for Texas. Jason Grilli allowed a run in the eighth to make it a little more interesting, but CJ Wilson closed it out for a 5-4 win. It was a long game. In fact, according to the box score (see the MLB Game Recap link above), the rain delay was two hours and eighteen minutes, which was eight minutes longer than the game (at 2:10).
We’re three games behind Anaheim now (who also didn’t do anything at the trade deadline), and just 1.5 behind Boston for the Wild Card. It’s August 1st as I write this. The trade deadline has passed. I think at this point, you can realistically start talking about playoffs, and not have it be a “Hey, that’s too soon” kind of thing. Go RANGERS!
P.S. I really like that we didn’t deal Derek Holland. Let’s hope that Holland holds up his end and shows us why we shouldn’t have sent him away.