After one of the best games in ages on Friday night, you always wonder if the next game will be a letdown at all. Most of the time it is, and this one was too – at least in the “excitement” category. The game itself was fine, especially because we won. But it wasn’t even in the same ballpark (haha) in terms of the drama of the thing.
The Rangers broke Felix Hernandez’ streak of consecutive quality starts (which I think was 18 or something). Hernandez was out after 4.1 innings. He had given up eight hits, four walks, and five earned runs. Definitely not very “king” like (har har har). I do get the feeling though if this guy were on a team that could score some runs, he’d have a way better record than he does (2-2).
The Rangers had a nice offensive attack, with 13 hits. They were evenly distributed, with every starter getting at least one. That is always nice to see. Hate it when all the hits were by 3 guys. The top of the order (Andrus, Young, Hamilton, & then Kinsler) had two hits. Elvis had a double, and Josh Hamilton had a solo home run in the fourth. But overall, it was a mass of singles, and it pushed across six runs in all.
Matt Harrison did pitch decently enough. Not great, but not bad. Six innings, seven hits, three walks, and three runs (two earned). He got the win, but not before Frank Francisco got the chance to make it scary again. As the Rangers don’t seem to be pitching Neftali Feliz on consecutive days, Francisco was brought in for the save opportunity. He immediately walked the first two batters, so the tying run was up the whole inning after that. He eventually got the save, but it was not easy, that’s for sure.
The Rangers are now at .500 (12-12) after this game, and are technically in second place, half a game behind the A’s. Although the division is so bunched up at the moment, it’s hard to put anything behind where we are in the standings.

As this game went along, around the 7th or so, when it became obvious I Colby Lewis was spiritually taken over by the pitching ghost of Nolan Ryan, I had a much different idea on what I was going to write. I’m going to put my initial report here first, and then write about what did happen.

ORIGINAL IDEA FOR REPORT:
Check out these lines..
Colby Lewis: 8IP, 3H, 0R, 1B, 10K
Cliff Lee: ??IP, 3H, 0R, 8K
Neftali Feliz: 1IP, 0H, 0BB, 3K, 1SAVE
In the bottom of the ninth, when it was obvious what was happening, I called my wife in and showed her the score (as she was busy doing other stuff). She knows enough baseball to get it from just the pause of the game, which showed Lewis still in, and the game 0-0 in the bottom of the ninth. When I told her that Colby Lewis was our STARTING pitcher, she said Wow!. I followed up by saying, you know, of the major professional sports, baseball is the only one where a tie game at the end isn’t considered a bore. Basketball technically can never have a 0-0 game. Hockey & Football have, but if you end up with a 0-0 tie in either of those, you’ve watched a boring game. In baseball, if you have a 0-0 tie, you’ve seen something spectacular most likely. And that’s what I saw tonight. A spectacular win!

Now granted, I formulated most of that in the 7th to 9th innings, so the line numbers aren’t right. Also, my paragraph about 0-0 games doesn’t take into account the shootout in Hockey, but the point is – if you get to a shootout in hockey that’s 0-0, it’s pretty boring – I know, I’ve sat LIVE through a few of those. 0-0 in football means it’s a pretty bad game. 0-0 at the end of nine on this night in Seattle was awesome!
Even after eight, the game was pretty darned awesome. When it finished nine innings tied 0-0 with Colby Lewis on the hill still, it was even better. The way it ACTUALLY finished – wow! One of the best I think I’ve ever seen.
These late games are ones I tend to skip around more than most. Since I had the thing TiVo’ed, my wife and I watched an episode of FlashForward (which is a great series – if you haven’t been watching it, you’re missing out). I have a part time job that I work one hour a night from 11PM to Midnight, so I started skipping forward in blocks because I wanted to get more of the game in than not when it was time for me to start my shift. I watched the Rangers bat – in 30 second skips, and fast forwarded through Colby Lewis pitching. After about an hour of that (in real time, not skip time), I thought “Hmm. This looks like it’s pretty good”, so I actually started watching the game around the 5th or so. It was still 0-0. And it remained 0-0. Colby Lewis was dominating.
All that Colby gave up happened early. Single to Ichiro in the first. Walk to Milton Bradley in the second. Single to Adam Moore in the second. Another single to Ichiro in the third. And that was it. From the second batter in the third inning to the third and final batter in the ninth inning, Colby got ’em all. All TWENTY ONE IN A ROW. That was seriously impressive. I mean wow. Colby Lewis struck out 10 Mariners tonight. Colby Lewis is leading the American League in strikeouts. How freakin’ wild is THAT? Colby Lewis has now struck out 10 batters 4 times in April. The only other Rangers pitcher EVER to do that was Nolan Ryan. Holy crap, this is good stuff. Not used to this.
After seven, Cliff Lee came out. I didn’t think he needed to come out, but it was his first start of the season, I guess the M’s were protecting him. He was followed by Mark Lowe & David Aardsma. I have to confess when I saw Lowe coming out instead of Lee, I thought we had it in the bag. I was emotionally banking on the fact that the departure of Lee, who had us doing nothing was going to be enough to turn the tide. It wasn’t. Lowe and Aardsma were as good as Lee. In fact, only Lowe gave up anything – one single.
So we hit the end of regulation with the same score we started it with. Donut. Had the game ended there with one of us winning 1-0, it would have been a great enough game. But it’s what happened after that which brought the game into the stratospheric level.
In the top of the 10th, the Rangers went quite quietly. Guerrero lined out, Kinsler struck out, and Garko grounded out. No noise there.
We get to the bottom of the 10th, and I did confess I would have loved to have seen Lewis come back out there. Baseball reasoning and my brain knew why he wasn’t coming back, but man, the fan and the heart wanted to see Colby go 9+ this game. After all he had set down 21 in a row, right? Still, Darren Oliver came out, and he’s been pretty successful this season. Darren got into immediate trouble, giving up a single to Ken Griffey (who was lifted for pinch runner Eric Byrnes (more on him later)). Right after that, Milton Bradley doubled, putting runners on second and third with nobody out. After the way we got here, I had all my usual thoughts about how I hate the 10th inning, and how Colby deserved better than that, etc, etc, etc… They decided to pitch to Casey Kotchmann. At the time Lewin & Grieve said that they probably were doing that to avoid the possibility of Ichiro batting with the bases loaded and two outs. Anyway, Kotchman popped out to short. The Rangers then intentionally walked Adam Moore, bringing up Jack Wilson. So begins the chess match. The Mariners brought in Mike Sweeney to face the newly changed pitcher, Darren O’Day. It was said that Sweeney had good numbers against Darren Oliver, which is probably why Darren O’Day was brought in. With one pitch, O’Day got Sweeney to ground into a 6-4-3 double play, ending the inning. While his face wasn’t to the camera, you could clearly see Sweeney mouth some sort of expletive. His body language (even backwards) was quite evident that’s what he was doing. So we dodged a huge, epic level bullet. Was quite a surprise that we were going to the 11th to be honest.
So we get to the 11th, and the Rangers go down in a hurry again. Smoak grounds out, Treanor strikes out, Murphy lines out. Bam – Bam – Bam! That scared me. Being the road team in games like this means if you’re gonna win, you have to face the home team twice before you win when you do nothing like that. Blah!
Bottom of the 12th. Frank Francisco comes in. UH-OH! Can’t say there’s a ton of fan confidence in him at the moment. While he’s been better now than the early part of April, I can’t say I was looking forward to this. And I was right. Ichiro is up first (what is this a rehab assignment game? He always seems to be up first), and singles to right. Chone Figgins also singles, putting men on first and second. Nobody out. Frank gets Frankin Guiterrez to strike out, and then the real fun begins.
Jose Lopez walked. Was I think one of those unintentional intentional walks. The bases are loaded. Ichiro Suzuki at third. One out. Eric Byrnes at the plate – this is the bit I mentioned earlier would come up. The Mariners tried a squeeze play to finish the game. It probably would have worked too, except that Eric Byrnes apparently missed a sign, and didn’t so much as try to get a bunt down as just stand there and look stupid. “Oh wait – Ichiro’s running towards the plate, I better get my bat out”. Francisco’s pitch was a pitch in the dirt – and Byrnes didn’t “offer” at it until after the ball was already in the dirt – it was really quite a pathetic attempt at covering the fact he missed a sign. Anyway, Ichiro would have been a dead duck normally. Excpect that the pitch was in the ground, and there was a small moment where Treanor couldn’t find the ball. He did recover in JUST enough time to tag out Ichiro coming home.
It was at this point I checked into the live game feed over at USS Mariner, and found some rather amusing quotes from the fans about this play, although my single favorite was this one:

This is the beautiful thing about the Mariner offense. They give fans new and inventive ways NOT to score runs!

That made me laugh out loud. Anyway, after Ichiro was called out, Ron Washington came out to argue that since it was a squeeze play, and Byrnes offered at it (even as pathetically as he did), it should have been called a strike. Which is probably right, but it got Wash ejected, which is a rarity for sure. Then he went off, which is something you don’t normally see the guy do. He went away, and then you realized that bench coach Jackie Moore was still away after the death of his child, so it likely fell to Clint Hurdle to be the acting manager, although that was not officially confirmed. After that, Eric Byrnes was called out on strikes, and we escaped a second bullet. I mean WOW. Just FREAKIN WOW!
On to the 12th, and at this point I was now quite late in starting my work shift, but I wasn’t about to leave this game now. Elvis Andrus leads off the 12th with a strange single that off the bat looked like it was going to go over the second baseman’s head, but instead landed in the sweet spot between second and the pitcher’s mound where there’s no time for anyone to get it. Single. After that, Michael Young has a chopper off the ground that went incredibly high up in the air. He was safe at first, but a throwing error by backup shortstop (Matt “Guy who way too many letters in his surname”) threw the ball away letting Elvis get to third, and Michael to second. OK, tables are turned. The Rangers now have second and third with nobody out. And then the first run of the game finally scored on the 299th overall pitch of the game. It was a wild pitch. Wow. After all that time, the Rangers take a 1-0 lead in the 12th on a wild pitch by Brandon League. Elvis Andrus scored, and Michael Young took third. This prompted another smart alec response from a Mariners fan over at ussmariner..

Oh! That’s how you score a runner on third! Hope guys in the dugout were watching.

Josh Hamilton was intentionally walked, and Julio Borbon drove in the second run of the game with a ground out to third. Kinsler & Garko couldn’t add to it, so it went to the bottom of the 12th and Neftali Feliz came in. Got Bradley, Kotchman, & Moore with no troubles. The game was over.
One of the best games I’ve seen in a long time. It was fantastic. It was definitely worth waiting up for. Colby Lewis has won me over. Another pitcher I owe an apology to for my pre-season “Why this guy” feelings. This is awesome.
Last words: Time of Game: 3 hours 14 minutes. If this were Yankees, Red Sox, they’d be in the middle of the sixth. We got 12 innings in all, and a better baseball game than I’ve seen out of Yankees Red Sox since about 2004 in the playoffs. There – I said it.

Ugh.
This was a good game, I was thinking I was going to write something good, including a nice story on how Justin Smoak got his first major league home run – into the upper home run porch.
But some godawful errors and some really crappy bullpen pitching let the White Sox salvage the last game of the series, and guaranteeing we’ll have another losing April record, although if we win on Friday night, it’ll be just one game under .500.
One positive, though – Feldman was better than he has been. 6 innings, 2 hits, four walks, three runs, but only one earned (hello errors).
Yeah, this game annoyed me. Shame, as it really was cool to see Smoak go upper tank.

Early on, you thought this was going to be the game we signed up for in 2010. Rangers mash early (they did – scoring 5 in the first inning), and then pitch well (which they did for awhile), but it certainly didn’t end up that way.
Josh Hamilton got it started early with a two run home in the bottom of the first. This scored Elvis Andrus, who seems to be doing well leading off now. This was sandwiched around a Michael Young popup. After the homer, Vlad flew out, and then the fun started. Both David Murphy & Justin Smoak walked. What do they do after that? Walk Matt Treanor. Walk the bases loaded after two outs. You’re really begging to lose doing that. A couple more hits gave us our early five spot. Arias singled in Murphy & Smoak. Then Borbon singled in Treanor. Elvis Andrus batted twice in the bottom of the first. Love when that happens, as it means something good has happened. :)
After that, the pitching took over, and the score remained 5-0 until the top of the sixth. Rich Harden was still in the game at this point, and despite his string of zeroes, it wasn’t a performance that made me go “OK, he’ll be fine now”. He did strike out seven in his six innings, but he also walked five, gave up six hits, and the first three runs the Sox got. His performance was parked somewhere between “meh” and “suck”. Probably closer to “meh”, but until he dials it more, I’m going to think it’s “suck” more often than not.
Darren Oliver & Chris Ray held on well enough, but Neftali Feliz did not. Gave us a good John Wetteland impression by allowing three hits and two earned runs in his frame of work. He did get the save, but just as Seattle’s bullpen coach used to do here, it wasn’t easy. The late umpire Durwood Merrill called Wetteland “A heart attack waiting to happen”. Feliz harnessed that tonight for sure.
The play that saved us was mostly the David Murphy double in the bottom of the seventh, which scored Michael Young. Had we not had that, we would have gone extra innings most likely – and you know how those usually end.

On a day when the Rangers’ catching situation turned itself upside down, the guy who was left after the round of musical chairs holding the starters’ job (for now) took advantage of that. Matt Treanor went 2-3 with three RBI’s and a run scored. That run was on his own solo home run, a line shot over the left field wall for the first run of the game in the second inning. He definitely seemed to be boosted by the fact that he’s now the #1 guy here, when he probably expected to get a cup of coffee at best when the season started. Treanor also had a double, so he had the power stroke going. An interesting stat – that was the first home run by a Rangers catcher since Pudge did it last season on September 9th.
Speaking of doubles.. Hamilton & Guerrero chipped in there. In fact the two of them both went 2-4. Other than these guys and Treanor, the only other hit by anything was a single by Ryan Garko.
Rangers pitching was pretty good this game. CJ Wilson continues to be strong early on. In fact, he’s pitching the way I thought Feldman was going to be coming into the season. No matter, we’ll take the wins. Wilson went six innings, giving up five hits and 3 walks for 2 earned runs. Punched out five. Few too many pitches though (104 through six). Get that down a little, and there probably could have easily been another inning pitched on his ledger. I got into his performance – I forget which inning it was now, but one of them ended with him getting a called strike three. The pitch was obviously a strike, and I realized after that that I was into it as I fist pumped on the sofa. Enjoyed that moment, actually. :) Nice stat on Wilson – he’s the first Ranger to begin the season with four consecutive quality starts since two guys did it in 1993 (Charlie Leibrandt & Kevin Brown). Keep on going Christopher.
I do have to confess to being surprised that we beat up a bit on Mark Buehrle. He usually shuts us down well.
We’re 9-11 after this game. I was hoping to be better than this now. Our bullpen has let us down. Still, it could be worse, so I’m not all panicky about the record. It’s close enough to .500 that I’m not worried about it, and the division is too tight for anyone to claim it yet (we’re in last place, but just 2.5 games out). So things are OK. Get Kinsler back, get our bullpen sorted, and our catching stabilized, and we should be OK. It seems like a lot saying that, but it doesn’t feel like it.

I contemplated writing just “shit” for this one, but some other stuff happened. Still, I’m not going to write a lot, since the Rangers irritated me with this loss.
Josh Hamilton finally got his second home run. After his torrid spring training, I thought we had 2008 Josh back. Nope, 2009 is still here. He claims to be healthy, so what’s the deal? It’s almost like he’s never adjusted from the league adjusting to him.
Justin Smoak finally got his first major league hit – a double to left. He also walked. I believe I recall seeing on the telecast that he’s the first Ranger ever to walk in his first four major league games. Nice. His OBP will be seriously impressive if he keeps that up. Wish I could learn that in MLB 2k10. I strike out constantly. :)
Oh, BTW… Shit.

After losing to Detroit by a score of 8-4 on Saturday, the Rangers turned around and beat Detroit by the same score on Sunday afternoon. Although it didn’t start out that way.
Detroit scored three runs in the first inning due to Colby Lewis seemingly not being able to pitch to anyone. He was doing a new impression. Was a combination of Mark Clark and Joe Roa. It started off poorly, with a leadoff home run to Austin Jackson. What followed was a single, double, walk, strikeout, line out, single, and a groundout. Not even in the same ballpark as the word “dominating”. While I don’t have a pitch count by inning, given how many batters got up, it had to be high. The Tigers also tacked on an additional run in the top of the second on a single by Ramon Santiago. However, that was the end of their scoring. At that point, the Tigers had four runs on seven hits, one walk, and two strikeouts. For the other seven innings, they had a total of no runs, one more hit, and one more walk. That was it.
Too bad Lewis couldn’t figure that out from the start. In all, Colby’s line wasn’t too horrific. 6.1 innings, seven hits, two walks, four earned runs. Not great mind, you, but given the feeling after the second inning, it wasn’t too bad at all. Colby did end up with 10 strikeouts, and actually leads the American League in strikeouts.
Only Tim Lincecum over in the NL has more K’s than Colby does right now. Wow.
Offensively, we were led by a home run by David Murphy in the first inning. Michael Young also had a double, and there were nine singles scattered through the lineup. Michael Young was the big story though – driving in five of the eight runs the Rangers scored.
Justin Smoak still doesn’t have a hit, but he did walk and score a run. In fact, only Smoak & Elvis Andrus went hitless this game.
Our catching situation is a bit of a fiasco. I wonder when something will happen with that.

The Rangers busted out early to a 4-0 lead. It was a good feeling early on.
Vlad Guerrero, who has been our best offensive player (with Nelson Cruz right behind him), started it off with a double, scoring both Michael Young & Josh Hamilton. Vlad followed it up in the second with an RBI groundout. Couple that with the RBI single by Elvis Andrus, and the Rangers were feeling good. Up 4-0 after two innings. Scott Feldman on the mound. Life was good.
Then it wasn’t good from the third inning on. The Rangers never scored again, and Feldman gave up eight runs in 3.2 innings of work. In fact, all the scoring for the entire game was done after the top of the fourth. The Tigers got a 3 spot in the third, and a 5 spot in the fourth. Scott wasn’t helped by a few errors, leading to FOUR unearned runs. Granted, 93 pitches in under four innings won’t help oneself, either.
So much for Feldman winning 25 games. :) Ok, I never thought that, but I did think he’d hit 20 this year. He still could I suppose, but he does not look like in 2010 what he looked like in 2009 AT ALL.
Justin Smoak is still an ofer, waiting for his first major league hit. But he continues to take pitches like nobody else on the roster, and walked once.