April games in Wrigley were never as fun as the ones later in the summer.  Growing up a Phillies fan, I always thought what made Wrigley look as good as it did was all the walls and ivy.   Which was never the case in April, as it was a bunch of brown vines, which I thought made the park look just the opposite – pretty dreary looking.   I do like that into 2013, the walls are still advertising free.  I remember for the longest time Wrigley had NO advertising of any kind inside the park.  That was really unique.   That’s been lost, but the walls remain mostly ad free.  Be nice if it could have stayed ad free.  I have always loved the ivy covered walls there.  I hope to see a game there someday.  :) [Read more…]

Nick Tepesch took the mound for this start, and while I didn’t think his line showed a very good outing, I didn’t feel it was that bad.   Oh, by every measurable number he didn’t do too great.  5.2 innings pitched.  Threw 102 pitches, allowed nine hits, four earned runs.  Pretty “meh” outing.  However, the “gut feeling-ometer” in my head didn’t think he was as awful as his line seemed to indicate.    I like this kid, really want him to do well.  Would love for one of our kids to come up, claim a spot, and not give it back.   With the surgery for Harrison, plus Colby Lewis still out, we need at least one of these guys to claim a spot on the rotation.   Hoping it’s Tepesch. [Read more…]

I had to work and do a bunch of family stuff, and as such I went to bed early on Saturday night.  I didn’t get to see any of this one, so this is a pure box score recap from me.  :)

The pitchers duel I thought we’d get the night before with Darvish & Iwakuma materialized a bit more solidly on Saturday night with Alexi Ogando taking the hill against Joe Saunders.  Saunders is a weird case for us, I always feel like we should crush him, but he’ll turn around and do what he did last night against us; especially when he was with the Angels.   Sat night was not a “crush him” night, I see. [Read more…]

While the team and Darvish both denied it afterwards, I cannot help but feel that the blister/finger issue that took Darvish out of his last start early contributed here.   He was wildly inconsistent.   There was an inning or two where Darvish looked like he did in the (almost) perfect game.  Then there were innings where he looked like he did on his first ever Major League start last season.   Most of it was in the middle, but the inconsistancy didn’t feel “right” to me.  There was something off, there was something keeping him from pitching like he did in the second inning of this game  the whole game. [Read more…]

The Rangers go to Seattle, and take on their toughest pitcher, Felix Hernandez.  As is my custom, I refuse to call him “King Felix”.  Again, if you’re a Mariners fan, or are Mariners media, that’s fine.  But I’m tired of seeing Rangers media give him the accolade by calling him that.  I refuse.   Anyway, while there’s no denying he’s a great pitcher, the Rangers don’t seem to be dominated by him.  Oh, he’s beat us, sure – but we’ve beat him our fair share.   Probably more than we should, considering how dominating he can be.   That’s good, IMO – great pitchers should beat you, but when you can hold your own with them, you’re doing good yourself.

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Before the season started, I wrote about Derek Holland that I hope he pitches well this season.   Well, so far he has.  Unfortunately, he’s just 0-1 so far on the young season.  Last night’s game was a good definition of “Hard Luck Loser”.    Derek’s line on Wednesday was 8IP, 5H, 3BB, 4K, 2ER on 110 pitches.  You tell me your starter goes out there and throws eight innings, allows just two runs?   Yeah, I’ll take that ANY GAME from any of our starters.   You cannot fault Derek Holland for this loss. [Read more…]

When I was watching this game, as Tepesch progressed through the game I was immediately reminded of Brian Sikorski.   He’s a Ranger starter who made his major league debut on Aug 16, 2000 (boxscore) against the Yankees, and nailed it.   I wrote about that here.  I bring this up, because I wasn’t the only one to make that connection.  Jamey Newberg did as well, he wrote about that in his update on Tepesch’s debut.   But this night wasn’t about Sikorski, it’s about Tepesch. [Read more…]

I didn’t get to see any of this game, missed the whole thing.  Lot of noise about the last pitch of the game afterwards.    It got Joe Nathan his 300th career save, and if you watch the pitch itself, it does seem like we caught a break on that.   After the game, Joe Maddon of the Rays threw a major wobbler on Twitter about it.  But even the ump came out and said he blew the call.  Check this out.. [Read more…]