Whenever I see a new pitcher making his Rangers debut, for some reason I always think he’s making his major league debut. I mean, unless you’re a seasoned vet like a Roy Oswalt or something like that, if it’s a guy that *I* never heard of before, then I think “rookie”. That was not the case with Wednesday’s starter Ross Wolf. Wolf started for the Rangers, and for me, seemed to come out of nowhere. Oh, you don’t just truly come out of nowhere, but I did think “Who is this guy?” Turns out this guy was a great pitcher – at least for this night.
Ross Wolf who last pitched in the majors before this game on October 1, 2010 as an Oakland Athletic, started for the Rangers, and did quite good. Now, we’re not talking Yu Darvish in Houston good, but I’ll take what he gave us. Five innings, allowed just three hits, walked two, and struck out three. Allowed a single earned run. He left the game with an economical 71 pitches, which tells me he probably could have gone longer, but he was probably on a pitch limit or something. While I didn’t see him pitch and couldn’t tell how they were moving and all that, it’s hard to argue with the end result. Did decently enough, didn’t embarrass himself, will probably get more starts, provided they’re available, as I gather this was one of those “starts of convenience”.
The guys who followed him (Cotts, Ross, Nathan) also held down the fort. Between the three of them, only Cotts allowed a single hit, and none of them allowed any walks. So the pen was better than Wolf, who was pretty good himself.
Offensively, it was a 90’s era Rangers offence. We had three runs, and they all came via a home run. They also all came in the first inning, too! David Murphy had a two run home run, and Adrian Beltre had a solo shot. That was it. The Rangers offense was done after the first inning. In fact, after the first inning, we only got three more hits the entire rest of the game – all singles. So we struck early, and then our pitching kept us in the win column.
Be curious to see how much more Wolf gets to pitch at the big leagues here, as it appears that Colby Lewis might not be coming back any time soon, unfortunately.
This win does make us 30-17, and have the best record in the major leagues at this point, and the best record after this many games in franchise history. I don’t think after all the losses from last year people were expecting that kind of thing from this team early on.