The Rangers evened their spring training record at 2-2 behind a 6-4 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was a game I was unable to listen to again. It was Daddy & Daughter day as Mommy was at work. To that, I spent most of my day playing a videogame on my Wii, “Disney Princess: Enchanted Adventure“. It wasn’t quite listening to Eric Nadel call a game in FM, mind you, but I had fun.
I did get to hear about half an hour of the game, and fortunately it was a decent part. I got to hear the top of the fourth inning where Greg Golson (who came over in the trade for John Mayberry Jr) hit a bases loaded double, plating Saltamacchia & Andruw Jones. That wasn’t all Golson did, as he beat out an infield hit earlier in the game which scored Saltamacchia again. So Golson had a good day. His official line was 2-3 with 3 RBI’s.
One of the Rangers’ strengths last season was doubles. We continued that today with five of our fourteen overall hits being doubles. Travis Metcalf, who appears to be the forgotten man of the infield hit two of them. There was the aforementioned one by Greg Golson, and the other two were by Max Ramirez and Justin Smoak. Metcalf actually had more hits than Golson, with three. It was all doubles and singles, no other hits besides five doubles and 9 singles. In fact, the bulk of our offense came from three batting slots (6 through 8). Saltamacchia was 2-2 with 2 runs scored in the six spot. Max Ramirez subbed for him in that slot and went 2-2 with a run scored himself. In the seven hole was Travis Metcalf, who went 3-5 with an RBI. In the eight spot was Greg Golson, going 2-3 with 3 RBI’s. Outside of these guys, there were only five other hits, so the 6-8 spots were definitely the offense for the day (although Joaquin Arias had an RBI in the 9 slot).
Turning an eye to pitching, Brandon McCarthy started. There’s been a lot of talk this spring about how he finally may have turned the corner into the pitcher we gave away John Danks for. Something to do with a talk with Nolan Ryan helping his mechanics. I’m hoping that’s the case, as I remember being very excited when we traded for him. Typically in Texas, they come here and don’t deliver. His line today was “eh”. Not really bad, but no number strikes you as “Oh my god – that’s IT!”. He went two innings, gave up just two hits, but also two earned runs on one walk and one strikeout. The guy who followed him, however was a bit better line wise. That’s Netfali Feliz, one of our true untouchables, I think. Two innings pitched. Gave up three hits and an earned run, but struck out four guys for four of the six outs on his register. Josh Rupe, CJ Wilson, & Derrick Turnbow each followed with a scoreless inning. Tommy Hunter finished up with two innings, giving up one hit and one run – a solo home run to Chris Roberson; the only home run of the day.
While I really wished I could have listened to this game (Saturday afternoon with a beer and a baseball game on the radio is great), I did have an awesome day with my daughter. I wouldn’t have been able to drink the beer either, as it’s forbidden due to the medicine I’m taking from my leg surgery last October. But the day with my daughter was way better than any Rangers game I’ve ever listened to. I love the Rangers, but I love my family a heck of a lot more.

I was knee deep in work today, and when I remembered the Rangers game started at 2PM, it was already quarter after three. Realized it was a “box score only” spring training game, so I checked it out, and saw the 7 spot in the top of the second inning. Lost my desire to want to keep up. To be fair, box score only games are hard to stay with, as they only update after half innings are done (usually). So you go off doing something else, waiting for the next update, and frequently forget about the refreshing box score in your other browser window.
Scott Feldman harnessed his inner Mark Clark today by allowing a seven spot in the second inning. From the article I read, he barely escaped giving up a bunch in the first two, by allowing four baserunners, but still not giving up a run. His line was pretty darned ugly. Nine hits, one walk, seven runs (although three were unearned). Gave up two home runs. Pretty stinky. We had five other pitchers in the game besides Feldman. Two of them gave up runs (Poveda – 2, Madrigal – 1). The other three were scoreless.
In the field, we had two errors. German Duran booted one, and Elvis had a throwing error.
Offensively, we had nine hits, which were pretty scattered again. Jarrod Saltamacchia was the only player with more than one hit. He had two, both doubles. His replacement at catcher, Adam Melhuse had another double, but his also plated two runners. Joaquin Arias had an RBI (but w/o a hit), and Josh Hamilton also batted in one.
We’re now 1-2 so far in the first week of spring. Tomorrow the Rangers go on the road, and are on the radio in the afternoon. I’ll try and listen, but tomorrow I get to be Daddy while Mommy is at work. Doesn’t always work with a three year old. :)
I TiVo’ed the Josh Hamilton show. My wife wanted to watch Battlestar Galactica instead, and I didn’t want to upset the pregnant wife, so we went with Galactica. I’ll watch Hamilton over the weekend. It’s not like I was only going to watch it once anyway. It’s been green dotted on my TiVo, so it’ll be there for awhile. I plan on showing it to friends from church who are not baseball fans when they visit. Figure I can draw them into baseball with that. :)

There’s been a lot of talk that Kevin Millwood is in a “contract year” (even though he technically isn’t). There’s a lot of talk that he’s in better shape and has lost a bunch of weight, and is supposed to be better in 2009. I recall hearing similar type things before last season, too. Anyways, Kevin started today’s game, and this early, the starters pretty much never go beyond two innings. That’s what happened here, too. However, Kevin was quite good in his two innings. He allowed no runs, only a single hit, and struck out three Royals. An encouraging first outing.
The Ranger pitchers that followed him, however. Not so encouraging. Especially Derek Holland, who gave up two solo home runs (and a couple of walks) in his frame of work. Doug Mathis also gave up a bunch (four hits, one walk, two earned runs), although his work was over two innings, not just one. However, Eddie Guardado gave up the most, three runs in his inning of work. He didn’t help himself, really. He loaded the bases (couple of hits, a walk), then gave up a bases clearing triple. Wasn’t all bad, though. Willie Eyre & Joe Torres both pitched scoreless innings.
Offensively, we didn’t put up much. The Royals helped a little with two errors, but we couldn’t translate those into anything really useful (one of the errors did lead to one unearned run). The high point was another home run by Josh Hamilton, but no Ranger had more than one hit, it was a pretty spread out offense, not the kind that leads to a ton of runs.
Got to listen to Rangers coverage. I coudn’t listen on a real radio, I had to listen on MLB Gameday at my computer, so the move to FM was lost on me (Gameday audio sounds somewhat tinny). Anyway, I got to hear Dave Barnett for the first time. I have the same opinion of him I did when I first heard Victor Rojas when he replaced Vince Cotroneo. Which is basically “OK, no major gaffes, voice is not grating, I can probably get used to that”. Radio announce adulation comes from time, not from anything (in my opinion) that happens generally, so I’ll need time to get used to him.

Well, here we go. I wasn’t expecting to listen to today’s game. I went to mlb.com to see about watching a box score refresh game, and saw that the Rangers game was on MLB’s Gameday audio with the Royals feed. So that was a nice bonus. Got to listen to the game, and the Royals announcers were pretty good. A lot of other team’s broadcasters bored me, but I didn’t mind listening to these guys, as they seemed to have a clue about the other team. Also, I briefly dropped in on the live chat on the DMN Rangers blog going on. There were several remarks by Jeff Wilson at the start saying that the Rangers game was not available to listen to – even when asked by someone if it was on mlb.com. One would think he’d actually LOOK before saying it wasn’t there.
Anyway… The bottom of the first inning Was a bomb of an inning. I didn’t get to hear all of it, as I was at work, but I did hear a bunch of it. As the Royals announcers said, “Michael Young was THAT guy – making the first and last out in an inning”. In between, we put up a six spot. I heard it right when the scoring started, which was a single by Nelson Cruz, scoring Kinsler & Hamilton. That was set up by a throwing error by Mark Teahan. After that, Hank Blalock jacked a HR onto the burm for another two runs. Murphy and Davis singled after that – with Davis’ sounding really good over the radio. Salty grounded out to score Murphy for the fifth, and the scoring was finished by an RBI single by Elvis Andrus. A heck of a way to get started in Spring Training.
Kris Benson was good in the first inning, allowing just a single, which was wiped out on a double play. The second inning wasn’t as smooth, as he allowed an enormous home run to Billy Butler.
However, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz picked that up immediately by jacking their first home runs of the spring in the bottom of the second. Back to back jacks. Hank Blalock just barely missed making it back to back to back, getting a triple right after the two home runs. We’re just destroying the Royals early on in this one. :)
Mike Jacobs did have a big three run home run in the third off of Matt Harrison, which made the total runs scored by the Royals 4 in the third. Not a lot of great pitching so far (in fact, there wasn’t a 1-2-3 inning until the bottom of the fifth). It was 9-5 after two and a half innings.
Funny thing is, right after I wrote that, the pitching calmed down a bit. There was no more scoring until the bottom of the seventh. The middle was pretty well pitched. The Rangers plated three more runs in the bottom of the 7th and 8th combined, and the Royals came back with two runs against Bryan Corey in the top of the 9th.
The Rangers threw out nine pitchers in all this game. The amusing thing about that is that Kris Benson started the game, and was the only pitcher to go more than one inning (he went two). Pitchers 2-6 each went a full inning, and pitchers 7-9 went 2/3 of an inning. For the record, KC threw out six pitchers. :) Anyway, the pitchers the Rangers threw out there all did well, except for two. Matt Harrison gave up four earned runs on two home runs (Butler & Olivo), and Bryan Corey gave up two earned runs on one home run in his 0.2 innings of work. Kris Benson gave up the other run. Again on a home run.
In fact, Home runs were in plentiful supply. All told there were seven in the game. Four by Texas, three by Kansas City. Our offense was pretty much engaged in Spring game #1. We had twenty hits in all. We had seven players with two hits, and the remaining six were scattered amongst other guys. Hank Blalock had power going, getting a triple and a home run in his three at bats. In fact, he just missed a second home run with the triple he got. Justin Smoak was 2-2 as well, and it was pretty evenly scattered.
It’s nice to get the ball rolling again. As usual with games during weekdays, I missed a lot of it due to actual work and stuff. But it was really nice to be listening to a Rangers game again.
Oh, and finally.. According to the press notes for this game, it DOES count in the spring training standings. Traditionally this first charity game doesn’t count, and I was under the impression this one would be the same. However, the press notes listed this game as “Spring Game #1”, and that it would count, so we’re 1-0 now.