The Rangers returned to Arlington for the lone exhibition game at their home ballpark this year. They play again tomorrow, but that’s in Frisco.
This game started off with CJ Wilson on the starter’s mound, and he was fantastic. Looked really great. I have to confess I thought Wilson pining for a starter’s job was just a whining baseball player, but he seems to have pulled it off so far. Let’s hope it translates into the regular season. He only went five innings, but in those five, he only walked two. That’s it. No hits, no runs. Was fantastic. Struck out four. Only threw 61 pitches, too. I suspect his initial success might be a result of him being a closer, and not as many people are as used to him. Be curious to see how he holds up once the league adjusts to him.
In fact, the rest of the Rangers pitching did well, too. Darren Oliver had a perfect inning, Willie Eyre gave up the lone run the Royals scored in his one inning, and Dustin Nippert got a two inning save. Combined, the Rangers went 9 innings, allowed just two hits and one run (all Eyre). Hard to beat that.
Offensively, the Rangers didn’t do much, either. They scattered five hits, but one of them counted. David Murphy jacked a two run home run in the seventh inning to account for all the Ranger runs. Other than that, not much else happened. Couple of walks, and four singles. One of the singles was the patented Vlad Guerrero poke of a ball over the second baseman he has no business poking at in the first place. Hope to see a lot of those this year.
One more exhibition game on Saturday afternoon, and then it counts for real.