Darnit.

You know, after the game was over, I tried to think of some cool way to say how great this win was. I thought and thought, and couldn’t come up with something good. All I wanted to say was “Man, that game felt great. The Yankees lost.” This felt better than most Ranger wins against the Yankees, too. I can’t quantify that, it just “felt” better.
AJ Burnett was actually quite good. Went six innings, gave up just two hits, and struck out twelve. That’s 12 out of 18 batters he got outs on he struck out. However, one of the hits was a three run home run to Ian Kinsler. Then when Burnett came out, his successor gave up another three run home run – this time to Chris Davis – something I’m sure brought a smile to Jamey Newberg. Ian Kinsler followed up with another home run in the 8th. We just overpowered them. Which is no easy feat.
Dustin Nippert was completely ineffective, but was lucky as hell. He didn’t make it out the fourth inning, and when he did exit, he had thrown 98 pitches. He also bloody walked seven batters during this time, and I believe only one of them scored. Jason Grilli followed up, and got the win, but deserved it. 2.1 innings of perfect baseball. CJ & Frankie finished the game out, not allowing any runs either.
I listened to the game on the radio in front of the computer, and had the MLB Gameday going too. I used their Twitter integration to chat with others about the game, which was kind of cool. Enjoyed that.
What else is cool is Anaheim lost and Boston lost. Good. Good, Good.
Oh, finally, after last night’s game, I wrote that they need to end the Jason Jennings experiment. That turned out to be pretty prophetic, as before this game, they designated Jennings for assignment to make room for Pedro Strop. I usually don’t get my baseball wishes answered that fast. :)

As has been my policy for the last few years, I don’t write about losses to the Yankees.
I will say this, however.. I think it’s time for Jason Jennings to go. It was a nice experiment for awhile. Drive through, please.

I really should know better. I really should. You see, last night my wife got something in from Amazon.com she’s been waiting years for. One of her all time favorite TV shows was finally released on DVD. This would be thirtysomething. Anyway, she had the big TV after the kids went to bed, so I was going to watch the game when she was done. I had avoided the scoreboard by not going to ESPN or my Yahoo front page or anything like that. I was good. And then popped up something I forgot about. The Firefox plugin TwitterFox decided to tell me what Victor Rojas was saying. And he said this. GAH! Now I don’t blame Victor, I blame myself for not turning off the plugin. I’ve figured out I need to avoid Facebook when I’m watching a game timeshifted (Hello Hannah), but now I need to turn off TwitterFox, too. Bleargh! So I knew the Rangers won before I started watching any of it. I did watch part of the game, the bits where the Rangers scored, pretty much.
As I’ve said numerous times before, anytime there’s 19 runs scored in a game, there’s not going to be a lot of good pitching. For the most part, that held up here, too.
Kevin Millwood had a horrendous first inning, but mostly settled down after that. Total line 5.2 innings, 7 hits, 5 runs, 5 walks, two home runs. Blah.
Jason Grilli. Ugh. Zero innings pitched, 1 hit, one walk. Both scored.
Frank Francisco. One inning. 3 hits, 1 walk, 2 earned runs. Bleargh! Even John Wetteland didn’t give us heart attacks quite LIKE THAT!
On the other side… Joba “Fist Pump” Chamberlain.. 4 innings, 9 hits, 7 runs, 3 walks. No home runs, though. He was bad.
Chad Gaudin. 3.2 innings pitched, 7 hits, 3 runs, 3 walks, 2 home runs.
Domaso Marte finished for the Yankes, and went 1.1 innings, not allowing any runs, but that LOWERED his ERA to 11.05.
The best pitcher of the night was Neftali Feliz. Two innings, just one hit, no walks, 2 k’s, no RUNS! O’Day also threw a zero on his line score, but he was just 0.1 innings pitched.
That’s the pitching. Offensively, the Rangers had 16 hits, the Yankees had 12. The only Ranger to take an ofer was Marlon Byrd. Everyone else had at least one. The guys with multiples were Young (2-5), Kinsler (2-5), Chris Davis (2-4), Elvis Andrus (3-5), and Josh Hamilton (4-6). There were two home runs for Texas. A solo shot in the fifth by Nelson Cruz, and a two run shot that just cleared the wall in right in the 7th scoring two. There were three doubles in the game, but it was mostly singles, as we had 11 of them. It was a lot. The Rangers pounded on Mr. Chamberlain.
Then we had to fight off the inevitable Yankees comeback in the bottom of the ninth. However, since I saw the final score before I watched it, I didn’t have nearly the nailbiting that most Rangers fans had. :)
Still, a win is a win, and it’s nice to get out of the Bronx with some of those. Let’s see what Derek Holland is made out of Wednesday night.

Scott Feldman comes in and shuts down the Rays to restore order to the win column for the Texas Rangers. Scott has been fantastic this year, but if you’re reading this you don’t need to be told that. He did turn in a performance today that was very cool. He did something a Rangers pitcher hasn’t done in ages, and that’s strike out eleven hitters. Scott went seven innings in all, and that’s 21 outs. 11 of them were K’s.
It didn’t stop there, either. Darren O’Day struck out the side in his one inning of work, and Frank Francisco had one of his own, too. That’s 15 K’s out of 27 total outs. Really nice going there.
The Rays were held to just five hits in all. Just one was a double by Pat Burrell, and all the rest are singles. Burrell was the only one with more than one hit.
On our side, Pudge caught the game, and went 1-2 with a walk. Pudge? WALK? What the… He also drove in two of the four Rangers runs (Michael Young had the other two). There wasn’t a ton of offense on our side either, but we didn’t need a ton.
That’s thanks to Scott Feldman, who has to be a serious lock for top of the rotation in 2010. If we insult him by not starting him in the rotation again, he should walk away from the Rangers. :)

A couple of home runs (Young, Byrd), a triple (Young), a double (Teagarden), and three singles weren’t enough. The Rangers lost in 10 innings.
I hate writing about those almost as much as I hate writing about Yankees losses. If we go into the Bronx this coming week and are bad, I’ll have an easy time with my updates. :)
One positive, Michael Young had another three hit game. That brings him to 159 hits with 39 games left. One hit per game gives him 198, I think he can pick that up easily enough and get to 200. :)

We’ve had decent luck against Tampa Bay starter Scott Kazmir – or at least my memory tells me that. So I was kind of surprised when I watched this game and he was the Scott Kazmir that “Scott Kazmir” says Scott Kazmir should be. Not that one who was just an average pitcher.
Against Texas on Friday, Scott pretty much shut down the Rangers, holding us scoreless through seven plus innings. That was finally stopped when Taylor Teagarden hit a home run off of him in the 8th to lead off. That was followed up by RBI’s from Marlon Byrd & Andruw Jones. Jones’ RBI I don’t understand – I missed it live, in that his box score shows no hits, and no sac fly. Not sure how he was credited with his.
There wasn’t a lot of Rangers offense. Six hits in all, and three of them from Michael Young (2 1B, 1 2B). Byrd & Andrus singled, and there was the Teagarden home run. But when Kazmir was pitching like that, there wasn’t much to go around.
Dustin Nippert took the mound and pitched like a lot of Rangers pitchers in late August – “meh”. Five innings, seven hits, five runs (four earned) two walks, and three strikeouts. The pen was pretty good (nothing allowed), but the runs against Nippert were all that the Rays needed for the win.