I was planning on doing this when my son was born in three weeks, but…
I found out yesterday that my job I had for the last 16 and a half years is going away. Not just me, but the whole company I was working for. Done – for those of you that didn’t know, I worked for 3D Realms, the folks who make Duke Nukem videogames. I have until next Friday at work, then I’m out. I’m working on a few things, but right now, I have to say I have zero desire to write about the Texas Rangers.
I WILL be back, but for right now, my head is a in a place where I can’t begin to bring myself to write. Sorry about that, gang. Given I have a kid coming, and I’m going to be out of a job, I want to put out the tin cup. If you are in an ability to help out, I’d really appreciate it if you could send a few bucks my way – but please understand it will not affect anything , but when you’re desperate, you have to do what you have to do. Thank you for visiting.
The donate button is to your right on top of the menu. Thanks.

Early on, this game was what you thought it would be. 2009 Kevin Milwood vs Felix Hernandez of the Mariners. You figured it would be a low offense game. And it was, for awhile. The first three innings were quick, clean, and devoid of runs.

Until the top of the fourth when Hank Blalock doubled in Michael Young and then Marlon Byrd singled in Hank. That put us up 2-0. Feeling good. Started feeling even better when in the next inning, Michael Young homered to right, scoring Elvis Andrus. OK, we’re up 4-0. With the way that Kevin Millwood is pitching in 2009 so far, you’re feeling really good about that.
Then the old Rangers Kevin Millwood showed up for the bottom of the fifth, as he gave up two home runs. A solo shot to Russell Branyan, and a three run job to Franklyn Gutierrez. Kevin wasn’t exactly awful there, but giving up all four runs you get right away was a bit disheartening.

However, Chris Davis came to the rescue, and reinforced Texas’ point in this with another two run home run (scoring David Murphy). That put us up 6-4. Seattle picked up their final run on a fielder’s choice by Ichiro.

The Mariners made it interesting in the bottom of the ninth. They put two on, and Ichiro was up, something you never want to see happen. Fortunately, Frank Francisco got him to pop out to center field, ending the game.

Frankie got a four out save. He got his eighth save, which ties him for the overall MLB lead with Heath Bell of the Padres. Speaking of numbers like that, going into today’s action, Kevin Millwood leads all pitchers with 45.1 innings tossed. That leads Zack Greinke by just one third of an inning, and Roy Halladay (44), Dan Haren (43), and Josh Johnson (42). At this rate, Kevin will vest his 2010 option by July. :)

The play that most people are talking about was the really extremely good play by Elvis Andrus in the ninth. It was quite amazing to see, and made you think of a ton of great shortstops from the past. Not the least of which was the guy who is currently Elvis’ backup, Omar Vizquel. It reminded me of a do or die play from 2001 in Seattle that caused an epic, major level meltdown by Lou Piniella. This one had a minor meltdown, but man was it a play for the year end highlight reel. If you didn’t see it, you will want to check it out here. The clip has the Mariners’ announcers, so they were not surprisingly skeptical of the call, but what the heck, gotta get some go your way some time. You could also check out this mp3 of Eric Nadel’s call, too (thanks to Jamey Newberg for the mp3) :)

The Rangers started off this game in a way that would make Ricky Henderson proud. Ian Kinsler homered to start the game. We went up 1-0 quickly, and never relinquished that lead.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure it would hold up, as the 2009 edition of Matt Harrison hasn’t been near as impressive as the 2008 edition was. However, Matt held it together pretty darned well on Sunday night. In front of a national audience (this was on ESPN), Matt showed why he was considered a big piece of the Mark Teixeira haul. Matt threw just five innings, but had an elevated pitch count (100), hence his early exit. However, he didn’t allow any runs on six hits and no walks. Wasn’t dominating (too many pitches), but did what he had to during his time out there. Get the pitch count under control, and this would have been a rather spectacular outing. Matt was followed up by Jason Jennings, who gave up the lone run that the Sox plated. Darren O’Day came on after that, and continued to show that he was a good, solid pickup. Usually waiver claim pickups are “meh” at best – otherwise why would the original team let them go? However, O’Day has been quite good for us. Something nice to see. CJ Wilson finished up with a scoreless inning. Overall, some really good pitching from the team from Arlington.
Back to the offense. We had five single run innings. There was the first, with the solo home run by Kinsler (his ninth). We also had three doubles in the game and a bunch (nine) singles. Not a real power game, but enough to score a single run in the third, fourth, fifth, & sixth innings.
This was all against former Ranger farmhand John Danks. Danks went just 5.1 innings, gave up 10 hits and 5 earned runs. Walked one, struck out three. This is not the line that fits with the commonly held position that the White Sox got the better of the trade that brought Texas Brandon McCarthy. Even with the five earned runs in about five innigs, Danks’ ERA is just 3.81, so he’s not like this all the time, but we have a habit of roughing up “good” pitchers in Arlington. Still, Brandon McCarthy has pitched pretty well in 2009, so the pendulum might be swinging back our way in the “Who got the better of the Danks / McCarthy trade” question.
This puts us back at .500. Let’s see if we can get on a roll. I got really tired of playing the “dance with the .500 line” last year. I don’t really want to do that again in 2009.

I’ve fallen into a bad habit lately in skipping large parts of Rangers games via TiVo, because they get down early, or are playing crappy or whatnot. I decided to score this game, as I wanted to force myself to pay attention. So what happens? Rain delay to start the game. Then four other delays. In all, 2 hours and 27 minutes of delays spread out over multiple occasions. The last one was just 12 minutes, and one was over an hour. What a mess. I actually almost went to this game. When it was first delayed, I almost hopped in the car and drove out. I would have gotten there before it started, but it was still raining pretty darned hard in Garland, I didn’t want to drive in THAT.
Anyway, Brandon McCarthy started, and looked pretty good. He went five innings, giving up just three hits and one run. No walks, which is very good. The only reason he came out of the game, was rain. In fact, he went four, and there was a delay. They came back and played the top of the fifth (I presume to get it game legal), and McCarthy pitched that, but the game stopped again, and he was done. Shame, as he probably could have gone awhile more, he exited with just 68 pitches over five innings. Pretty good.
Luis Mendoza came in, and proceeded to stink up the joint, despite the smell of rain. He actually got two quick outs in his inning, then gave up a hit, a walk, and a rather painful hit of Jermaine Dye. Then a grand slam to AJ Pierzyqeiosdfgok (how the heck do you spell that?). Sigh. At that point, it put the A’s back in the game, as they had been down 9-1 before that slam.
Eddie Guardado gave up the other run. Darren O’Day continues to look like a great pickup, it’s a look we haven’t had from a pitcher in ages. The closest I can think of would be Mike Venafro, and even his sidearm wasn’t as pronounced as O’Day’s. Feldman played with sidearm for awhile, but has pretty much gotten away from it.
Fransisco finished up with a perfect inning for the save.
Offense wise, we did all of our scoring in the third and fourth innings. Three in the third, and six in the fourth. The three in the third were a three run home run by Hank Blalock, which finally put Tom Grieve on the board for the “home run call” game. The six runs in the next frame were pretty much due to the five doubles we had that inning. Nobody went hitless in this game, although Michael Young was the last to get a hit.
There was a really nice play by Omar Vizquel, who has played pretty darned well during his time here. Doesn’t look like a guy on the back end of his career, tell you the truth.
Jose Contreras does, though. 0-4 with an 8.31 ERA now. I wonder if we’ll get him next weekend in Chicago.

Well, that was disappointing. It was a loss. Of course it as disappointing.
Early on, Scott Feldman looked like the really good version of Scott Feldman. That one that seemed he had earned a spot in the rotation after the way last season ended, but Scott got shafted in favor of Mr. Anna Benson. Anyway, with MAB on the DL (shocker, I know), Scott got the start. He was lights out early on, was perfect through three innings, I believe. He ran out of gas in the sixth though. The three runs he gave up were all at the end. This is probably due to him not being stretched out enough. But before he ran out of gas, he looked pretty good, hopefully he can stick here, and we don’t have to put MAB back out there.
Derek Holland came in, and immediately gave up three runs – the three that were charged to Feldman, and gave away what should have been a Feldman win. Oh well. The inning after that, Derek gave up the fourth and deciding run. Darren O’Day and CJ Wilson came after that, keeping the White Sox off the board, but..
We couldn’t come back on this one. All the Rangers runs came off of starter Mark Buehrle. And they were in the first three innings. The first run was a Michael Young home run; that was the only homer of the game. Young also had a double, as did Andruw Jones. Elvis had a triple. But we couldn’t put it together against the Chicago bullpen, which pretty much kept us in check late.
That’s a bummer, as I really wanted us to win. While we’re playing the “dance with .500” game again, it’s better than “dancing with “the .350 winning percentage” game like we’ve done in the past.

I’m not writing about this, I found out last night a relative has colon cancer, and was given a timeframe to live. Not the kind of news that makes you want to write about baseball. Sorry folks, taking a pass on this.
If I feel better later, then I might go back and say something, but I just don’t feel like it right now.

Well, we have our first rainout of the season. I was watching, and saw them go into a rain delay. First, FSS showed some good Rangers rain delay programming. They showed the Chuck Morgan episode of “In My Own Words”. The old footage from the Grand Ol Opry is definitely worth the price of admission. :) Then the FSS people had some epic fail by putting on friggin POKER. The stupidest thing ever on television. Like that’s a substitute. I switched over to watching “Time Warp” on the Discovery Channel. Tonight’s episode featured Metallica, which was a rather entertaining subject. If you’ve never seen Time Warp before, it’s a show where they record things at like 1,000 or 2,000 frames per second, and play them back in regular speed, so things go stupid slow. Some of the things they do are quite amusing (like putting six airbags inside a car backwards so all the windows blow out, filling a pressure cooker with food, and blocking the pressure relief valve. Then watch it in slow motion. Most of their videos are restricted on Youtube from embedding, but I found one about water. Check it out below (in HD, too). You really should check this show out.
Oh, the Rangers game? It was rained out after awhile. Did they make it up tomorrow, when I would have called work and taken a vacation day to go to the doubleheader? Noo.. They scheduled it for May 29th. That’s bad for me, because it’s the day my son will likely be born! Darnit – I love doubleheaders!
Anyway, here’s the Time Warp video (if you’re on a feed reader, you’ll need to hit the site most likely)…

There’s more Time Warp videos available here (including the Metallica stuff, which was really cool).