The game just ended a minute ago. I’ll have some more to write later, but probably not till tomorrow.
My kid was up most of the night sick, so Mommy and Daddy got very little sleep. Will probably pass out tonight. :)
I ended up passing on commentary for this one. It was an extra inning loss, which always end up irritating me.

Kason Gabbard looked good again, and seemed to have no ill effects at being at the bottom of the pile due to Sexson’s still gutless move of charging the mound. Unfortunately, Kason didn’t get the win due to Josh Rupe letting some inherited runners score. Kason went 5.1 innings, gave up five hits and two walks. Rupe, who allowed runners to score, got the win, and got no earned runs on his ERA. Gotta love those baseball rules, eh? :)
But this game was about our defense. Kinsler, Vazquez, Hamilton all made spectacular plays in the field to rob several Mariner hitters.
We actually didn’t have a ton of offense. Just seven hits, and they were all by just four Ranger hitters (Murphy 2, Laird 2, Vazquez 2, Boggs 1). Boggs and Murphy doubled, but that was about it.
Scary moment for Gerald Laird going headfirst into second base, looked like he was done and headed to the DL when he hit the bag.
Eddie Guardado looked spectacular in the ninth, didn’t he? I have to admit I didn’t think that signing would amount to much. While it’s still early, and he can still tank, he’s done well so far, something I didn’t think would happen.

You know, as I sat here watching this game, I thought of several angles to take reporting on it. With all the seesawing in this one, I didn’t know which way I’d go in reporting this story. Now that it’s over, I can’t get the following image out of my mind, so it’s what I’m going with as commentary for this story. Except to say that Hamilton’s ball went WAY further than it was reported. Can we institute a recount? Can we overturn a distance call?

Well, first off, I didn’t see most of this game. I spent the day with my family, and with it being Mother’s day, I saw just part of the early bits of the game before we headed out to do the family thing in the afternoon.
What I saw was the Sidney Ponson that has existed for the last few years make a reappearance. The one we’ve had up until this point has been really great. The one we got on Mother’s Day 2008 was well, “Sidney Ponson”. He actually stuck around the game for awhile (5.1 innings), but he gave up seven hits and five walks. That was pretty indicitave of the entire Rangers pitching staff, actually. Ponson was followed by Esteban German (0.2IP, 3H, 2R), Jamey Wright (2IP, 1H, 1R, 1BB), and Eddie Guardado (1IP, 2H, 3R, 2BB). None of our guys did particularly well this day.
Rich Harden came off the DL for Oakland, and proceeded to stink up the joint about as badly as Ponson did – worse if you look at the line. 3.2 innings, eight hits, four walks, and 5 runs. Not good.
Since I didn’t see much else of this game, I’ll pass on going into a lot more detail. Check out the MLB.com Recap I link to here, there’s plenty of detail, plus some video.

On Saturday evening, the Rangers went to extend their winning streak, but in the first inning, we got something that kind of made it not much matter. After just two thirds of an inning, Kevin Millwood came up lame after a pitch, and had to be removed from the game. The injury was later described as “mild strain of the right groin muscle”. It turns out it wasn’t so “mild”, as Kevin ended up on the disabled list over this. This now leaves just Vicente Padilla as still in the rotation from the original opening day starting rotation. Blech.
Josh Rupe followed Kevin, and threw three innings. He wasn’t sharp, gave up five hits and two walks. Fortunately, he just gave up one earned run in all that, with one unearned. Josh ended up with the win, but the next reliever had quite the dominant outing. Frank Francisco threw 2.1 innings, gave up just one hit. More importantly he faced eight batters. Struck out five of them. Guardado & Benoit followed up, keeping zeroes on the scoreboard. CJ Wilson finished up, although was not very good, giving up two runs in his one inning.
Offensively, we were driven by positions 1 through 4 in the lineup. All but one of our hits came from the first four spots in the lineup. Ian Kinsler, Michael Young, and Milton Bradley each had two hits. Josh Hamilton had three. Milton Bradley had a home run and a double. Josh Hamilton and the non 1-4 hit (which was by Duran) were also doubles.
We did lose our scoreless innings streak in this game too, but the more important part of this is that we won the game, bringing us back to just two games under .500.

I started listening to this game on my headphones. I had to mow the lawn. Since we bought our daughter a sandbox for her third birthday, I can’t let the grass in the back yard slide as much as I might have in the past, since she plays out there. Don’t want the fire ants to hide behind tall grass, eh? So I’m walking around the back yard listening to all the pre-game, as well as the start. The team made all the claims that last night was “behind us”, but you all know that Padilla will be on the mound, so you wonder if he’ll plunk someone – he’s pretty good at it. :)

Anyway, this game was quite good. Scott Feldman, who seems to be making some good first steps at becoming a starter took the hill for the Rangers. While it’s hard to judge how effective a pitcher is by listening to the radio sometimes, one gets the feeling that he was pretty decent. Obviously, his line spells that out, but I didn’t see how the pitches were moving, that kind of stuff. Speaking of Feldman’s line.. Six innings, two hits, four walks, but (something you probably already know) ZERO runs allowed. Feldman was followed up by Jamey Wright, Joaquin Benoit, & CJ Wilson. All of which threw a single frame of (again, scoreless) relief. This was Feldman’s first win of the year, and it continued in the line of great pitching we’ve received lately. This makes two great outings in a row for Scott. He was great in Oakland last Sunday as well when he got screwed over by a dropped ball – one of the “non error errors”.

When I was out mowing the lawn, Brandon Boggs took a dive into the left field wall, and from the sounds of it on the radio, he smacked his knee in a rather unfortunate place in the left field wall. As you can see in the picture above, there is a very small place where you could do this, so Brandon was unlucky in that he hit the really small spot. It knocked him down; he was on the ground for awhile, but stayed in the game. I did see the latter parts of the game on TV; they showed Brandon’s parents and sister (who seemed bored quite frankly, unlike his mom). I bet Mom was a bit freaked out during that.

Anyway, the following inning, Brandon erased any doubt over whether he was really hurt or not by jacking a home run into the left field seats for a 1-0 lead. This kid really has earned his spot, and I cannot see a reason why we’d send him back down now. With his emergence, did anyone see a regular outfield of Brandon Boggs, Josh Hamilton, & David Murphy at the start of the season? I didn’t. These guys are all doing very well. I rather hope they don’t try and shoehorn someone in (Cruz) to get at bats “or a look”. The guys out there now are doing great, and should stay there until they prove otherwise.

Boggs’ home run was all we really needed, but he didn’t stop there. Boggs had two other RBI’s when he doubled in the sixth inning, scoring Bradley & Hamilton. Boggs had a great line tonight – he went 3-4 with a run scored, and three RBI’s. Not bad when your parents are in the stands at all. :) The other run was driven in by league leading Josh Hamilton who went 2-4 this game.

It’s three shutouts in a row. It’s thirty one innings in a row of shutout ball by the staff. It’s quite a pitching feat, even more so that it’s from a team that is not known for this kind of stuff. Kevin Millwood goes on Saturday to see if the streak can be continued.

Richie Sexson is still gutless for throwing his helmet. Should have been more than six.