We were shut down by New York’s pitching. Michael Young & Josh Hamilton had RBI singles in the first and third innings, but that’s all we managed to push across the plate all game. Even one of those runs was unearned. Of our six overall hits, just one was an extra base hit (double by Cat). That was pretty much it.
Kason Gabbard was “meh”, although I didn’t think he was THAT awful. 5.2IP, 8H, 3BB, 4ER.
I have to say I don’t like watching pitchers bat. If we continue to have splits between AL & NL vs the DH, then we need to reverse it in interleague. Use the DH In NL towns, and make pitchers bat in AL parks.
G70: Rangers hang on with 8-7 win in Game 1 of DH
Boy, the Rangers really tried to give this one away, didn’t they?
Kevin Millwood came out, threw a good outing (6IP, 2R). Had too many walks (4 in 6 innings), but still got the job done. Only two runs allowed. Then Frank Francisco came in after an inning of scoreless relief by Jamey Wright. Francisco proceeded to stink up the joint worse than a Chan Ho Park outing. Just one out, gave up two hits, two walks, and allowed three earned runs to score. Well, some of them were “allowed” by Eddie Guardado, but you know what I mean. CJ Wilson got the save, and in true John Wetteland fashion, was all over the place, allowed a few runs to score, left guys on base – was so far from a clean save, it was’t funny.
We needed all the offense we got, plus a great defensive throw by Milton Bradley to gun out a Met at home plate turned out to be bigger than I think anyone thought it was at the time.
The Rangers were powered by three home runs (Vazquez, Kinsler, & Bradley). Bradley’s appeared to leave the park completely. Vazquez was the leader, going 3-4 with 4 RBI’s and two runs scored. Nice game for Ramon.
Ponson released
- P Sidney Ponson released
- P Thomas Diamond activated from the 60 day DL and optioned to AA Link ]
The State of Major League Baseball 2008
There’s a site I frequent quite often, it’s called “The Biz of Baseball” run by a fellow by the name of Maury Brown. If you are interested in the business dealings of the sport, it’s an invaluable site (even if you’re not interested, it’s just good reading). Anyway, in December of 2006, they ran an article called “32 Voices on the State of the Game“. It was an article with a sort of free flowing stream of consciousness from several completely different viewpoints. It was quite compelling. Well, they’ve done it again.
Out today is the next installment, entitled “The State of Major League Baseball 2008“. The odd thing (to me) about this entry is that I was asked to contribute to this new article. That was mind boggling to me, as I consider myself a small fry when it comes to things like this. But Maury persisted, said I was someone he definitely wanted a “a new voice that was a fan perspective”. So I sat down and wrote. If you’re familiar with this site, you know I can tend to “go off” on tangents, and just get mad at stuff. That’s kind of what I did in my piece. So check out the new article, not because I am in it, but because there’s a lot of good thoughts in there.
I still feel a bit “tingly” to be in the same piece with some heavyweights and big names like Chuck Armstrong (President, Seattle Mariners), Jerry Crasnick (ESPN Author), Jeff Erickson (Rotowire), Brent Gambill (Producer, XM Satellite Radio’s MLB Channel), Jeff Passan (Yahoo), and of course Ken Rosenthal (from everywhere). Thanks Maury!
Edit: After getting permission from Maury, here’s my piece from the full article.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
I’ll start off with a theft from Will Carroll. It comes from the first Voices entry of this series.
“Saying what’s right and wrong with the game is an exercise in hubris and futility.”
Will’s right. It’s hard to have a good, honest list as to what is right and what is wrong that covers everything, which everyone can agree with. Even if you could make the list, would you want to? The flaws are what make the game. Baseball is a confusing game to “figure out”. You think you have a handle on how it should be done, and then find out that you don’t. But as humans, we tend to complain about things first. Most of the complaints you hear about about baseball are “too expensive” or “steroids”.
The bigger complaint is about money, though. There’s lawsuits about statistics (who owns the numbers), so much advertising that the head spins, a cost of parking and gas that is more than tickets in some places, and the price of concessions? Ha! Heck, the mlb minimum salary ($390,000) is so far out of whack with the “real” minimum wage ($12,168, assuming 40 hr work week) that it’s mind boggling how far removed from reality MLB seems to be when you talk about money. Everything is about the “Baby Ruth Home Run Challenge”, or the “DHL Pregame show”, or the “Monster.com All Star ballot”, to things like whatever the name of the Giants park is this week, and all that. You could take up the space that all 30 of us are using to talk about corporate naming issues. Heck, I saw a McDonald’s logo ON THE PITCHER’S MOUND in PNC Park when looking at it in Google Maps. My kid’s bobbleheads have half a dozen logos on them, nothing can get out there without being sponsored. I’m surprised there aren’t some sort of logo inside the men’s urinals in the bathrooms – or on the hot dogs themselves! We have so much money floating around the game that if baseball gave a religious tithe like Jesus commanded, we could probably do away with a lot of poverty in places. Don’t even get me started on the extortion of cities that is building new stadiums.
On top of the things with money, then there are the things that are just confusing. For example, MLB made a major stink recently about how games are “too long”, and they want to shave some time off. I think I read where the average time is longer by a matter of single digit seconds. Not minutes, but seconds. So what comes out at the same time? The note that we will have instant replay for home run balls, and for balls by the foul pole. They make a major deal about games being too long, then add a time suck like instant replay. Want the games to move faster? Call the bloody strike zone the way it is defined in the rule book. There’s several rules that are already on the books that if actually ENFORCED would make the games go faster. Man, that’s just perplexing.
A lot is made of the fact that it’s a game meant for kids, but so many ancillary things around the game are things we have to “explain” to kids is a major hassle. As the parent of a three year old, I’m enjoying teaching my kid that a home run is not just when they “run” around the bases – they have to hit the ball over the fence. If I had to get into why Barry Bonds looks like a horse, or why she keeps hearing the words “performance enhancing”, I don’t know if I’d try to get my kid into baseball. There’s so much business around the game, that it almost doesn’t feel like it’s for “kids” anymore. We’re teaching kids to get ahead, get the biggest signing bonus there is, you’ll “strike it rich with Scott Boras”, etc, etc, etc.. That’s why I’m enjoying Josh Hamilton now. A man who has discovered God, and is not afraid to show it. Good for him. Oh, he’s not the only one, but he is a local one to me, so I hear about him the most. When you hear so much bad about the sport all the time in the media, it’s nice to hear something nice like that.
What is The state of baseball? The state of “baseball” is fine, despite all the negativity above. The sport is too good to kill, but if you’re reading the website this article will appear on, you probably know this already. The most vitriolic complainer will still love sitting out at the park watching the game. Baseball will sometimes go and do something very nice – like the recent Negro League player draft at the recent MLB draft. I enjoyed that moment a lot. So yeah, there’s good there, but there’s SO MUCH negative it feels that it’s hard to find the good (outside the actual game itself).
P.S. I would like the return of scheduled doubleheaders – heck, give me a tripleheader!
Tejeda DFA
- P Kason Gabbard recalled from AAA
- P Robinson Tejeda designated for assignment [ Link ]
Rangers and Mets rained out
The game between the Mets & Rangers was rained out. Came in from mowing the lawn tonight, and after a shower, sat down to watch the game. Puddles of rain in the outfield, and thanks to TiVo, I fast forwarded about an hour and a half and found out there was no game to be played.
Father’s day tomorrow, and a doubleheader! The only thing that would have made that better was if the doubleheader was in Arlington, and not in Flushing, NY.
G69: Rangers shut down by Oliver Perez, lose 7-1
The Rangers were a good example of good pitching vs good hitting. For seven innings, the Rangers were shut down by Oliver Perez and the Mets. He allowed just three hits, while striking out eight. The only two blemishes were a solo home run by Josh Hamilton in the first inning, a single by (of all people) Scott Feldman, and another single by Hamilton later in the game. That was IT! The Rangers had nothing going all night, our swings looked bad – Perez was on. Not a lot you can do against that.
Feldman looked OK for awhile, giving up three runs in the first five. But he ran out of gas (or the wheels fell off, or any other euphemism you want to put here) in the sixth, and allowed four more runs. In all, Scott allowed six earned runs, and one unearned run. Josh Rupe and Robinson Tejeda finished up the last three innings, giving up nothing, but the damage was done.
This was Oliver Perez’ game. Not much more to say about this one.
G68: Rangers can’t sweep anyone again, lose 6-5
We just can’t break out the brooms. Thought we had it in hand, but the Royals came back and beat us like we beat them the previous two games, although with not as many runs on the scoreboard. :)
It started off with the major league debut of Eric Hurley for the Rangers. Eric sounded like he was pretty decent. He got burnt by a few home run balls – all four runs Eric gave up were to the longball. For a major league debut, going six, giving up four on six hits and three strikeouts – but more importantly, no walks! All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good start. Assuming he stays in rotation, and isn’t sent back out again, his next opponent will likely be the Atlanta Braves back home, a slightly better hitting team than the Royals. Let’s see what happened.
Offensively, we were held to just seven hits, but they were efficient, as we pushed across five runs on them. KC didn’t help much, giving up just one walk all day. Michael Young took another ofer for the second game in a row, dropping his average below 300 again (to .299). Josh Hamilton was the only Ranger with more than one hit (two doubles), the other five were scattered, although two of them were back to back home runs by German Duran (three run) & Ian Kinsler (solo).
The game was lost by Frank Francisco, who gave up the tying and winning runs in the bottom of the eighth, losing it for Hurley. Oh well. On to Shea Stadium and the Mets.
G67: Rangers win 11-5 behind big seven spot in seventh
Through six innings, this game felt a lot like the game that preceded it. Rangers starter wasn’t exactly bad, but his line was not great at the end. Vicente Padilla was the 2007 version of himself. Not bad, but not really that good. His final line was six innings, seven hits, three walks, five runs (four earned). Meh. He was victimized most by Mark Grudzajklwslfkkzb (har) who had a double, and a two run home run, and four RBI’s in all. The Royals picked away with small amounts of runs (two in the third, one in the fifth, two in the sixth) until we were down 5-1 going into the seventh.
Kyle Davies started for Kansas City, and pitched like Gil Meche did the game before, pretty darned well. Davies allowed just a single run over his six innings pitched. He did walk a lot – five, to go with six hits. But he got outs when they counted. Then we got to the Kansas City bullpen.
Then we got to the seventh where it seemed Kansas City just couldn’t get anyone out. To save time, I’ll post the play by play from the game. It pretty much tells the story, but I’d be remiss in mentioning the big blast – a grand slam by David Murphy, his first ever career slam. Came off a lefty, too.
Rangers 7th (Rangers 8, Royals 5) — Pitcher Change: J. Fulchino replaces K. Davies. R. Vazquez triples to center field. I. Kinsler reaches on throwing error by M. Aviles, R. Vazquez scores; I. Kinsler to 2nd. M. Young walks. Pitcher Change: J. Gobble replaces J. Fulchino. J. Hamilton singles to center field, I. Kinsler scores; M. Young to 2nd. M. Bradley walks, M. Young to 3rd; J. Hamilton to 2nd. D. Murphy hits a grand slam to right field on a 2-0 pitch, M. Young scores; J. Hamilton scores; M. Bradley scores. M. Byrd doubles to center field. Pitcher Change: Y. Yabuta replaces J. Gobble. F. Catalanotto out on a sacrifice bunt, Y. Yabuta to M. Teahen, M. Byrd to 3rd. G. Laird out on a sacrifice fly to J. Gathright, M. Byrd scores. R. Vazquez grounds out to M. Teahen. (7 Runs, 4 Hits, 1 Errors, 0 LOB)
There was some SERIOUS booing coming from the stands in Kansas City over this inning. We tacked on some more in the ninth with the second home run by David Murphy in the game (a solo shot). We got two more on some more singles. It was a pretty good offense this night. Yeah, it’s Kansas City, but you always like seeing more runs than less.
I also take responsibility for ending Michael Young’s hitting streak. I posted that graphic yesterday of Gabe Kapler’s 28 game hitting streak from some years ago, and then Young’s stopped at 23. :)
Michael Young & Gabe Kapler
OK, Michael Young is at 22. I wonder how much longer until the Dallas Morning News creates this series of graphics. You guys remember this?
Funny thing about that graphic is that when the DMN was doing that, they pre-made the graphics up to like 32 or something like that, and they were all just sitting on their server. If you found out the actual URL for the file, you could manually see the ones beyond 28. Was amusing to me at the time to see how far they thought the streak would go. :)
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