I know there was more to talk about, but the only thing that mattered was the walkoff home run. We won the game on the second pitch of the bottom of the ninth. Michael Young won it. Prompting these. I mean, really – do we remember anything else? I don’t.
We needed this heading out on the road. If we had not won this, it would have been a mighty bad way to hit the road against a division leader.
You hear the term “hard luck loser” a lot if you hang around baseball enough. Last night was one of those nights. The guy wearing 33 on his back for the Rangers definitely qualified. Kevin Millwood threw a nine inning complete game. Gave up just five hits and allowed only two runs. Struck out three (walked three though). By all accounts a great game, one definitely deserving of a win. This should have been Kevin’s third win of the year already. It wasn’t.
That was because of Zack Greinke of the Royals. He also threw a nine inning complete game. Problem is while he allowed more hits than Millwood did (7 to Kevin’s 5), he also struck out 10 and allowed no one to cross the plate. The pro writers will have an eloquent way of saying this in their reports.. “Greinke was friggin awesome!” I mean what else needs to be said really? He dominated the game totally – we looked mostly stupid at the plate. Only Blalock managed more than one hit. Of our seven, only two were extra base hits (one double by Salty, a triple by Blalock). In fact, Hank’s triple led off the inning, and he was stuck there, never scored.
As much as you feel bad for Millwood, it was a totally masterful and dominant performance by Greinke. Definitely deserving of praise from this Rangers fan.
What is it with Kansas City. Even when they’re at the lowest of the low (which was most of the time), we have problems with them. This is a team that until this year teams are supposed to beat easily, and we’re constantly losing to them. Is it the time in Surprise? Who knows. But it happened again.
After the “Good Karma” of Kinsler’s 6-6 cycle, it pretty much did not carry over. Kinsler himself went 2-4 for this game (with a walk), which was better than most everyone. Hank Blalock went 2-5, but Elvis Andrus led the way from the 9 hole with a 3-4 night. No runs or RBI’s, but he was the only Ranger with three hits. Blalock, Byrd, & Salty each had solo home runs which accounted for all three of our runs.
David Murphy came in as a replacement, and took another ofer. He remains ofer 2009. That’s a bit disturbing. If it doesn’t turn around soon, it might affect his playing time or his spot. In another odd move, Michael Young was pinch hit for by Omar Vizquel. I’m not sure I understand that one.
The pitching, however… Matt Harrison is not looking in 2009 like he did in 2008. This game was well, ugh. Five innings and six earned runs on eight hits with four walks. Two of the hits were home runs. Bleh. Willie Eyre, who was just called up to help the pen was no help. 1.1 innings, giving up three runs on four hits and two walks. Josh Rupe was even worse. 1.2 innings, three runs on six hits and a walk. Eddie Guardado finished up, and actually threw a scoreless inning, which REDUCED his ERA to 11.25.
The pen has been pretty bad to start the season, and we haven’t had much of a chance to test Frankie. If this keeps going for too much longer, there probably will be some big bullpen changes.
Where the heck do you start with this one? After a dismal several games, the Rangers finally kicked it into gear, and appeared to be pissed off that they had lost several in a row, and really took it out on Baltimore. Not nearly as much as that 30-3 game against them in Baltimore, but this felt just as good. The reasons for the good feelings were several:
I mean, how can you be a Rangers fan after this game and not feel good about it? OK, if you wanted to, you could say that Young & Salty had ofers. With all the offense, it seemed odd that any of our starters would have an ofer, let alone two of them. We were 9-20 with RISP.
But the heck with the negative, it was just fun to watch. Mr. Anna Benson actually got the win, but he was not all that great. Good enough for a win, but definitely not great.
As I sit here to write this, I can’t think of anything else to say except, “That was badass, wasn’t it?”
Enjoyed the win, enjoyed the Kinsler performance. Did not enjoy the TV post game interviews. Are the Rangers trying to get people to not watch post game stuff? Mike Ogulnick & Jim Knox are both “turn to something else” people. I never watch top of the second stuff – when Knix in the “Fox Box”. It’s an immediate skip.
In a turn of events that I thought at the time probably made Randy Galloway pretty happy, the Rangers bullpen blew the game again. I figure he was just waiting for them to get home, lose a couple, and go “See – I told you so”. That’s part of the reason why I never listen to him on the radio. I think if we actually won the World Series, he’d complain about it. Anyway…
Brandon McCarthy pitched OK. Wasn’t lights out, but was decent enough. Enough that you didn’t feel afraid with him out there. Six innings, five hits, three earned runs. Technical quality start, but the fact that he didn’t embarrass himself or the team is major progress for the man that wears Mike Schmidt’s old Phillies number on the back of his Rangers uniform. CJ Wilson got back on the horse, and threw 1.2 innings of shutout ball after his debacle the previous game. Frank Francisco came in during the eighth and played four out closer. He wouldn’t have gotten the save, but the idea was we win it in the bottom of the ninth. That didn’t happen, and we went to that very very scary land. Rangers extra inning baseball. It’s enough to make you think that Michael Jackson is a good babysitter. Eddie Guardado came in to pitch the 10th inning, and he pitched like CJ Wilson did the previous night. 2/3 of an inning pitched, four earned runs on four hits (one of which was a home run) and a walk. Not good. Warner Madrigal mopped up with a scoreless final out, but the damage was done. We were down in extra innings. Not good.
What got us there offensively was pretty good. We started off the game early with three solo home runs. Michael Young, Nelson Cruz, & Chris Davis all hit home runs off of starter Alfredo Simon in the first inning plus. Simon then left the game with some sort of injury. He also took with him the Rangers offense. That was it for our offense through four relievers who shut the Rangers down from innings two through nine. Nothing. Seems to be a recurring theme at the moment. Usually teams like getting into other teams’ bullpens. Not us in 2009. When we get to the bullpen, we are usually done. We weren’t able to piece anything together until the 10th inning. At that point we were down 7-3. We did manage to get two runs across, and loaded the bases too for Josh Hamilton. The stage was set, and we didn’t deliver. Extra inning loss. That’s bad enough, but we had managed to get an offense going there. Just not enough to get over the hump, which was fairly annoying.
Also, Omar Vizquel’s deke in the field was quite smooth. Enjoyed that.
Michael Young was 3-4, raising his average to .355.
David Murphy is still struggling, his average is a donut still.
On April 14th, I altered my site header to have Jeremiah 29:11 in the header. Why is that there? Well, first off, it’s a bible passage. From the NIV translation, it says:
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
If you’ve been following my site for awhile, you’ll know something about me, one of which is my love for Jesus Christ. Something else I’ve talked about before on this site is Johnny Oates. I’ve always liked Johnny Oates. As you probably know, I grew up in Philadelphia. Back in the mid 70’s Johnny was a Phillie for awhile. He was the backup to Bob Boone mostly, but there was one year where he was the #1 catcher (1975, if I remember right). While I don’t truly remember the first baseball game I went to, I do recall Oates being a Phillie at games I went to, so it stuck with me. Also, the baseball card image to me was one I always liked when I was a kid. The reason for that is back then you didn’t see spring training at all. It’s not like today – unless you traveled there, seeing video from spring training didn’t happen. Or didn’t for this kid. So I liked this card. It showed Johnny at the Clearwater facility the Phillies were at then. On top of that I always liked this card design as the years went by. So I latched onto this card as one of my favorites as I was a kid.
Fast forward to my moving to Texas. I was here for just two years when the Rangers announced that Oates was going to be the new manager here, and that got me into the Rangers. I had seem some games at Arlington Stadium in its final season. But I didn’t really get into the Rangers until 1995 when Oates (and another former Phillies pitcher, Kevin Gross) were on the team. As his tenure went on, we had great success, and I found out more about him as I was now an adult. Found out about his strong sense of God. He believed, and wasn’t afraid to say it. Makes me wonder what it would have been like had Josh Hamilton been a Ranger when Oates was still a manager. I would have loved to have heard some of those conversations. Even through his illness and death, he was extremely upbeat about God and Jesus. He never (to me) seemed mad at his situation, blamed God – he continued to praise him, which was awesome! I loved that more than the baseball stuff he was known for.
Anyway, over time I collected Johnny Oates baseball cards. A handful of them I had him sign personally (including the card image above). One of the ones I have of his was one of his final player cards, the Fleer 1981 card when he was with the Yankees. On this card, he signed Johnny Oates Jer 29:11. That’s the source of the quote above. Given how much Oates meant to me baseball wise, and his strong connection to the Rangers site, I decided to stick Jeremiah 29:11 in my site’s header and tell this story. I miss Johnny, his strength was a great inspiration to me, and when I was going through my recovery from my leg surgery, I thought about him and his strength when I was having problems with pain and moving around. It helped a lot. So God bless Johnny Oates, and his family for sharing him with us in the baseball world.
Furthermore, a few months ago I decided internally to talk more about God & Jesus on this site. I’m not going to go over the top with it, but if the discussion lends itself, I will use that. One of the things I’ve suffered from for awhile is “Spiritual Schizophrenia”. That’s where you believe in God, and then you “turn it off” in other parts of your life. That you are only doing “that church stuff” when you’re in church, and the rest of your life doesn’t have it. I’ve made a few comments along this line lately on my site, and I have to say – the feedback I’ve gotten since I started doing that was encouraging. I wasn’t sure if people wanted to hear that, and then God moved some people to let me know that perhaps yeah – it is the right thing to do. I’m not turning this into a religious blog. It’s still a Rangers site, and it will be baseball, but I won’t be afraid to witness if the situation dictates it. I am me still, I’ll probably still say things of a strong nature when my emotions carry me there.
A friend of mine who I told I was doing this said “You need to be careful if you do that kind of stuff”. My thoughts lept to Luke 6:22 when he said that. He didn’t mean anything bad by it, but I thought “You know, if people don’t like me and my site because I’m not afraid to talk about the Bible and God’s word, well, then there’s worse things to be disliked for.” For those of you who believe, may God bless you for believing. If you don’t, and would like to talk about it, drop me an email, I’d love to talk to you about it. Maybe someday we’ll get to tell Johnny about out ourselves. I want to close this out with one of my favorite passages:
I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. (Philemon 1:6)
Sigh.
At least we had three home runs, including the titanic shot by Chris Davis.
Sigh. We’re better than this. Not April, guys. Stop it with the crap in April!
Gah!
I was going to write about how good Millwood was this game. He looked great. Seven innings of four hit, shutout ball. No walks. Looked really great out there. Then CJ Wilson came in and blew it. Couldn’t do anything out there. Officially charged with just three earned runs, although six were allowed in all. That was just awful. Nothing good to say there.
Josh Hamilton & Ian Kinsler’s home runs were wasted. Funny thing is we were mostly shut down, too. Last game we had just two hits. This game we had just five. Four of them were extra base hits, and we were efficient again, having just five hits and four runs.
But the bullpen!
