1-0 wins don’t happen very often at Rangers Ballpark. There was some dialogue during the game about how infrequent it was. I know the 2012 edition of the Rangers is supposed to be all about the pitching, but even with that, one doesn’t expect 1-0 games at Rangers ballpark. That just doesn’t happen. But it did. The starter that I had the least confidence in going into this season took the hill; Neftali Feliz. After what could kindly be called a rocky spring training for him, he went out there and pitched like I hoped he would, but didn’t actually expect would happen.
Neffy went out and threw seven innings, allowing just four hits with two walks. Punched out four, but most importantly just one run. Also, had just 108 pitches over the seven innings. An average of 15.4 pitches an inning. That’s quite good. This is one of those pitching outings where you don’t have a ton to say, because most of it is just “Man, that was good”. It was an awesome first start of the season. More than any of the other starters, if Neffy can hold it together like this for the season, we’ll be doing quite well. Wow, 1-0 win on his first start of the season. That’s just so cool it beared repeating.
The flip side of a 1-0 win is that there’s a starting pitcher on the other side who got the short stick; no run support. The winner there is Blake Beavan, the first round pick of the Rangers. He pitched quite well, too. Blake went 6.1 innings, allowed six hits and a walk, but with one huge difference. Blake had an earned run on his ledger. Most definitely a hard luck loss there.
Back to Rangers pitching.. Mike Adams & Joe Nathan both had a single inning of perfect relief. Joe got his second save as a Ranger. Great bullpen work.
Offensively, we didn’t have a ton going on, but what we did was clearly led by David Murphy, who after this game was batting .533! Murph had two doubles this game, as well as the lone RBI for either team. If Murphy keeps this up, it’ll be hard to remove him from the starting lineup. Which is good, he’s deserved a real shot for some time now. Not that I think he’ll carry a .533 batting average too long, but he’s clearly playing quite well at the moment.
Wow. 1-0 win. Gotta love that.