Got home from church and found out that Sunday’s game was rained out. Was hoping they’d play, but I guess it’s more MLB 10: The Show instead. :)
Game won’t be made up – not officially in the standings, although there will be a B game tomorrow where today’s guys will get their work in.
Read somewhere that this is the first rainout since 2007 in the spring. I could have sworn that wasn’t the case, but I can’t recall offhand.

I didn’t get a lot of time to listen to this one, as I was out and about running several errands. I was spending some time with my daughter, and I did have the game on the truck radio. She did ask me a few questions like “Daddy, what’s a foul ball”, and “What is such and such”.. That was cool, because she’s asking, this might be the year I get her to want to watch herself. Or at least teach her the game. She knows home runs, of course – because as we should all remember from 20 year old advertising.. Chicks dig the longball.
Anyway, this was another well pitched game on both sides. Tommy Hunter started for Texas, and looked good. Two innings, just one hit, and a couple of strikeouts. The first run was scored on his watch, but it was an unearned run. That was due to the rather sloppy play the Rangers had at points through the game. The other run KC got was later on when Willie Eyre was on the mound. That too was unearned, and was the direct result of 18 year old Leury Garcia.
Leury Garcia had quite the busy day, and was responsible for both runs scored in the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning. In the top of the inning, he threw a ball away from short, allowing a runner to reach, then just a batter or two later, he committed another error attempting to field a caught stealing throw. However, he made up for it in the bottom part of the frame by grounding in the only Rangers run. He was unusually busy for a guy who wore the number 98 on his back.
Overall, not much offense. Rangers had just five scattered hits – one was a double. The Royals too also had seven scattered hits. Of the 12 total, nobody had more than one.
However, the coolest thing to come out of today’s game was that the Rangers pitchers did not walk anyone. Early on in camp, that’s a fantastic thing to see. There’s a million reasons you can bring up to explain that. But despite all of them, it’s still QUITE cool to see a column of zeroes under BB in the box score. What’s even better than this is the fact that Ranger pitchers have walked just two batters ALL SPRING so far. Neftali Feliz walked one in Game 2, and Rich Harden walked one in the opener. All told, that’s 18 pitchers tossing a total of 26 innings over three games. Just two walks. Wow.

Spring Training Game 2 was one that I didn’t realize was on the air. I had forgotten to check the Rangers games not on the radio to see if the opponent’s radio coverage was on. It was, but I didn’t notice that until the score was already 2-1 KC in the seventh. I listened towards the end, but not much excitement there.
Offensively, this was a different beast than yesterday’s game. Yesterday’s had 16 runs and 28 hits between the teams. Today’s game had just 6 runs and 13 hits. Yesterday there was just 3 or 4 Rangers used that didn’t have a hit. Today, it’s the opposite. Just six had hits – nobody had more than one. Of those hits, just two were doubles (Nelson Cruz, Max Ramirez). Not a lot of power here at all.
The other side wasn’t much better. They had seven hits, and two of ’em were extra bases (2B – Billy Butler, 3B – Rick Ankiel), the rest were singles. They just pushed more across.
Zack Greinke started the game for the Royals, and from what I’ve read and see in the box score, he was as advertised. Three scoreless innings, with just one hit given up. Other than the single he gave up, the other nine batters he faced were outs. In the three innings of work, he faced just ten batters. No idea how dominant that was, as the box scores in spring don’t list pitch counts, but one over the minimum is always a cool thing to see.
Rangers pitchers counted four today. Each of them pitched two innings. The best was Dustin Nippert (third). He gave up no hits in his two innings. Feldman gave up 3, CJ Wilson 2, and Neftali Feliz gave up two. Overall, a decent pitching performance, if not too far leaning towards the great side. Eight innings of work, seven hits, four earned runs. Just a lone walk, though (Feliz), so there wasn’t a ton of wildness.
After game one, I had that pipe dream where I was going to see constant spring scores of double digits every day, and a winning percentage of like .850 for the spring or something. Ah, the innocence of Spring Game 1 comes crashing back to earth with Game 2. I shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Saturday we’re back on the radio again.