This is my first game back on regular updates. I wasn’t sure what would bring me back to that, oddly enough it was the death of Shannon Stone that jarred me back into writing something. I picked the All-Star break as a the time to get back into it. Picked a good game to do it.
I listened to this game on MLB At Bat on my iPad for awhile. Got through about the sixth inning, until my wife got the kids to bed, at which point I started watching the new series of Torchwood that is on the air now. But what I missed was pretty much “more of the same”.
Up until the point I stopped listening, Derek Holland was brilliant. Quite darned good. He threw a complete game shutout, which is always good for anyone. But especially for someone like Holland who has shown more good than bad this year, but still had the maddeningly bad outings from time to time. That he looks like he’s starting to put it together is darned promising for the future. Yes, he’s not 21 anymore, and he needs to get the job done, but I’ll be satisfied with consistent improvement, he doesn’t have to go straight to 22-5 with a 2.15 ERA for me to go “OK, that’s working”. He’s overall been better this year, and if both he and Harrison keep it together? That bodes VERY well for our future, assuming we can hang onto CJ Wilson after this year.
The Ranger offense got going early with first and second inning solo home runs by Josh Hamilton & Nelson Cruz. We also tacked on a third run in the third on a couple of singles, one an RBI single by Michael Young.
That was the end of the offense I heard on the broadcast, as I went to watch Torchwood. The other two runs came on another solo home run (Mike Napoli), and another couple of singles.
But man, the story of this game was Derek Holland. He actually had a no hitter going into the sixth, but by his own admission, he looked at the scoreboard a bit, and let a few hits get by him. At one point, he had retired 15 batters in a row, and this is the Rangers eighth straight win. Anaheim was idle, so we went 1.5 games up on them.
We were strong going into the All-Star Break. Be nice to keep that up going into the second half.