After beating the Mariners and the A’s eight straight games, we move on to Anaheim. Given how anemic the Mariners offense was, and the A’s not being all that much better, you wonder, “Well OK, that’s all good, but is this JUST us beating up on bad teams? How good are we, really”?
With that attitude in tow, I sat down to listen to the game on Tuesday night on my iPad. It was Alexi Ogando vs Tyler Chatwood. Chatwood was someone the Rangers have never faced before, and while this wasn’t his first start (it was his 18th), he is still fairly early on his career. I never seem to like going against new pitchers early on, as we tend to get shut down. That wasn’t the case here.
Despite the final score being 7-0, we were only up 3-0 going into the eighth. Four of the seven runs were scored in the last two innings. The first run scored on back to back doubles by Hamilton & Beltre. The second run scored on a walk (Napoli), and a couple of singles (Chavez & Kinsler). The third run scored on a walk (Andrus), and a single (Young), coming after Andrus made it to third on another play. The fourth and fifth runs scored on a two run home run by Endy Chavez, scoring Napoli who had walked. The final two runs both came on solo home runs in the 9th by Josh Hamilton & Adrian Beltre, back to back. Nice even offense. As much as I like to see the orgasm of scoring from time to time (like a 10 run inning), a nice spread out offense is probably better for the long run.
Pitching wise, it was Alexi Ogando again. He seems to have recovered from his blip where he got bombed for a few starts. Eight innings, just four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts. More walks than usual, but it didn’t seem to hurt him. Mark Trumbo was the only Angel with more than one hit, and both of them were doubles, oddly enough. The other two hits were singles by Callaspo & Aybar. His numbers show an outstanding performance again.
Darren Oliver came in and pitched the ninth, and threw a perfect inning. Ogando was probably still OK to pitch the ninth, but it was said that Oliver was coming in to get some guys some work who haven’t pitched in over a week due to the All-Star break. It’s all good.
Rangers have now won 12 in a row, including FIVE shutouts in the last nine games. That’s amazing. Don’t think we’ve ever had a stretch quite like that before, have we? The entire rest of the division lost last night, so we picked up a game on everyone. We’re now:
Five games up on the Angels.
Twelve and a half games up on the Mariners
Fourteen games up on the A’s.
If we sweep the Angels (probably won’t happen, but still), we’ll come back home seven games up in the West (who knows about Mariners & A’s).
Looks like I picked a good time to come back to regular game updates. :)