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G60: Rangers lose again (what a shock), 11-4

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It’s a good thing I’m not Evan Grant. Why? He has to write about these bad games and teams. I can just say “They suck”, and be done with it. He has to be more erudite than that. Of course, he gets paid for this, I do not. I guess that’s compensation enough, eh Evan? :) I am just at a loss. The pitching is far worse than anyone could have ever imagined. I did think that after the last few years, I shoudln’t be THIS disappointed, but like most Ranger fans I was pretty high on the spring training team, Ron Washington, etc, etc, etc.. I’ll still be a fan, but MAN are they not good.
Loe gave up nine runs in 2.2 innings. That’s an ERA of what, about 6,000? Eric Gagne pitched an inning and didn’t give up anything. Given the usual demand for pitchers, he’s probably our best bargaining chip next month. Hopefully he holds it together health wise until after he’s traded. Mark Teixeira had a home run in the bottom of the ninth, when it didn’t matter. I’m still up in the air on what will happen with him. Last week I figured he was a total goner, and then that quote by Mike Young came out saying “If he goes… that’s not what I re-signed here for”, makes me wonder. I say if Arod opts out of his contract, you immediately give Tex what he wants, throw all that lost Arod money at Tex ontop of what you were going to offer him anyway.
Speaking of bad teams, let me take a moment to point out a very funny book about some very bad Texas Rangers teams of the early 70’s. The book is called “Seasons in Hell”, and was written by Mike Shropshire. Here’s some text about it. If you’ve never read this, I strongly suggest you do – it’s extremely good. Especially if you’re a Rangers fan:

Assigned to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire looked forward to the perks and padded expense account that went along with the job. He never dreamed he’d have to earn every penny–following arguably the worst team in baseball history. Full of wild games and wilder nights, and the exploits of some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game, this book is Shropshire’s irreverent, behind-the-scenes look at the hell a truly pitiful team can raise between games and innings.
Joe’s Remarks: I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this one either. I bought it because of the tagline on the front about it being funny. I admit to not knowing a whole lot about the very early years of the Rangers (I didn’t move here until 1992, and didn’t really follow ’em until 1995), and the thought about reading a book all about them didn’t thrill me.
However, I quickly found out that this was a hysterically funny book. Mike Shrophsire has a very funny wit, and isn’t afraid to let it fly when talking about the Rangers of this era. His recollection of events is awesome, and makes for very funny reading. If you’re a fan of the Rangers, or even if you’re not, GET THIS! It’s a very great read, although I don’t recommend it for very small kids, as there’s more than just one or two cuss words in there. Still, for adults, it’s well worth it.

A non draft item

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A short non draft item.
Scott Feldman was recalled from AAA, and John Rheinecker was sent back there.

The Draft

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Original Post @ 10:30AM:
I’m sitting here at work with mlb.com’s video channel on, which is supposed to simulcast the ESPN2 feed. I expect it will be swamped, and be unwatchable due to extreme bandwidth demand.
Anyway, I’m not the greatest expert on the draft, so I will defer on analysis completely to Jamey Newberg and his gang on the draft – I suggest you do too. Go check out Jamey’s site for all there is to know from a Rangers’ fan perspective.
UPDATE @ 4:445PM:
Our second pick in the sandwich round was used on pitcher Neil Ramirez. At this point, I’ll have to stop, as I need to get back to work. :)
UPDATE @ 4:20PM:
OK, they’re not showing the sandwich picks on TV anymore, so we’re done with screen grabs. :) The Rangers took an outfielder as Pick #35 overall, which was the compensation pick for losing Carlos Lee. The kid’s name is Julio Borbon.
Our next pick is 44th overall – in the sandwich round. It’s a pick for losing Gary Matthews.
UPDATE @ 3:20PM:
The Rangers second pick in the first round is pitcher Michael Main.


UPDATE @ 3:15PM:
The Rangers are on the clock again at Pick 24.

UPDATE @ 2:43PM:
The Rangers first pick is local boy Blake Beavan. ESPN is calling him “the most competitive pitcher” in the draft.


UPDATE @ 2:38PM:
The Texas Rangers are on the clock!

UPDATE @1:10PM:
Hearing Bud Seling say “Tampa Bay is now on the clock” was seriously cool to hear. Then showing Don Zimmer, and hearing all the Tampa Bay fans in the background chant “Tampa Bay – TAMPA BAY” was really cool. I enjoyed that a lot. Wonder where all those guys are at Tampa Bay home games, though. ;)
UPDATE @ 1PM:
I’ll probably have a few remarks on the draft itself, not so much on the players – that’s Jamey’s bag, not mine. :)
It just started. This looks just like the NFL draft graphics. That’s kind of cool. This whole thing makes it “feel” like everything is all of a sudden more important.

G59: Rangers suck hard; lose 10-0

Posted by on at http://mlb.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20070606&content_id=2009905&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb>MLB.com Recap

You know, my TiVo recorded this game, and I was home when it started. I was more interested in playing a new release of Pac-Man on my Xbox 360. Played that for awhile. Worked on a problem on another website of mine. Helped put my daughter to bed. Then played some Uno on Xbox 360.
Decided I didn’t want to start watching the Rangers game from the beginning, so I just went to live TV on my TiVo, and saw the score after the top of the 6th. I turned the TV right back off, and immediately thought of this quote from Homer Simpson (reference). I think it about sums this one up.

Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I’ve seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

The Rangers suck. I don’t know any other way to put it now.
Kevin Millwood

G58: Rangers go out huge early, hang on for 7-4 win

Posted by on at http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20070605&content_id=2007883&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp>MLB.com Recap

I don’t have time to write a ton here as I got too busy at work today.
But it was interesting being up 5-0 after the first five batters, and then 6-0 after the first seven batters. It was quite an interesting sight to see Detroit’s starting pitcher be pulled after six batters. That was a surprise.
I was also surprised at our ability to hang on like we did – we did add a seventh run late, but that was a long time “hang-on”, there. :)

Plenty of moves

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  • P John Rheinecker activated from 60 day DL
  • IF Jerry Hairston Jr activated from 15 day DL
  • OF Nelson Cruz optioned to AAA
  • OF Matt Kata designated for assignment [ Link ]

G57: Rangers drop third of four in Seattle, 11-6

Posted by on at http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20070603&content_id=2003282&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp>MLB.com Recap

I missed almost all of this game, because I was busy with church activities, and when I did sit down to watch the game, I promptly fell asleep on the sofa. Twice. So I missed most of this, but from what little I did see, it was… aw hell, we stunk up the joint again.
It looked OK early, but that was in the first couple of innings when it was 1-1. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, we were losing 6-4. It had the same kind of feel that Saturday’s game had. Got behind, caught right up, didn’t feel too bad. Only down two.
Then in the sixth, not only did the wheels fall off, but the wheels rolled off into the lake next to the road, an alligator ate them, and were never heard from ever again. We gave up another four runs in the bottom of the sixth, and while we picked up two more in the top of the eighth, it didn’t feel like we had anything in us.
EXCEPT for Victor Diaz. I almost titled this entry “The Mariners beat Victor Diaz on Sunday”, but decided not to. I did see Diaz’ three run home run (that’s right, fell asleep right after that), along the way to five RBI in all. Diaz is batting 297 now with 7 home runs and 16 RBI in limited duty. I wonder if he’ll get a longer look now, especially since Nelson Cruz seems to have gone into the hopper. While I don’t think anyone is clamoring for the return of Kevin Mench or Laynce Nix, I bet most people still think trading Coco was a mistake. Oh well, at least Carlos Lee is doing well in Houston – D’oh!
The best news about tomorrow’s day off is that we can’t lose the game. Not that it would matter – a quick glance at the standings as I write this shows we again have the worst record in major league baseball. We’re #30! We’re #30!
Since we’re leaving Seattle, I thought this might be a good time to show this video clip which Ranger TV fans should recognize. I think you may have seen it. :)

G56: Rangers wake up late, but it’s not enough; lose 5-4

Posted by on at http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/wrap.jsp?ymd=20070602&content_id=2001373&vkey=wrapup2005&fext=.jsp>MLB.com Recap

Through five and a half, this was a pretty good pitcher’s duel between Miguel Batista & Kameron Loe. OK, perhaps it’s not Steve Carlton vs Nolan Ryan good, but you couldn’t argue with a 2-0 score after five and a half innings. Things were going good in that regard.
Then the wheels fell off for Kameron Loe. As is the custom with the 2007 Rangers, the wheels normally fall off immediately, but this time it wasn’t until the sixth inning, when Loe gave up a 3 spot to go along with the two the Mariners already had. To be honest, I didn’t think he was as bad as his line looks, but as the old adage goes, “numbers don’t lie”. Oh well. Of course, eight hits and four walks in 5.2 IP isn’t that great either, so what the heck do I know?
Offensively, we got a pair of hits (single, double) from Ian Kinsler, and another pair of hits from Ramon Vazquez (singles). We had three more hits that were scattered (singles from Catalanotto & Byrd), one of which was a home run from Mark Teixeira, who has seriously helped his value in a trade, if we choose to go that route (which I really hope we do not).
The Rangers themselves matched the three spot the Mariners got in the bottom of the sixth with a three spot of their own in the seventh, so the game didn’t seem lost, it was 5-3 after 7.5 innings, so it felt like we were in striking distance.
In fact, we did pick up another run in the ninth. We lost (familiar), but showed some spark late (not familiar). Not sure what that means, though.

Keeping Score [UPDATED]

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Saw a nice article over on mlb.com about the lost art of scorekeeping. It is true that it’s a lost art. I keep score at every game I go to, and when I do, I rarely see anyone else doing it. A few years back when I had a bigger season ticket package, I noticed a lot of others doing it (Hi Rose!), but it seemed to be regulars; only season ticket holders for some reason.

Now I can understand why. It requires you to pay attention to the entire game. A lot of fans who go to these games seem to (unfortunately) not have the attention span to watch the whole game, let alone pay attention to every single pitch. And don’t even get me started on the boob job & cocaine crowd at these things who are there to be on their cell phones, or just “to be seen”.

Anyway, I’ve been doing this since I was a kid in the 70’s, and still enjoy doing it today (I wish I still have some from my youth, I’d like to see how bad my kid scoring was). As an adult, I used to buy programs, until I realized I was paying the Rangers $3 a game to keep score, so I decided to make my own form in Microsoft Publisher 98, which basically was a copy of what was in the Rangers programs. This file is still available here on my site as a download if you use Microsoft Publisher. After awhile, I wanted something else, so I went to sporting goods stores and bought large printed books – at about $4 or $5 or so, it was’t bad at all, they usually lasted the whole season. But even that got tiring after awhile because of all the limitations that physical paper has on games with a lot of subs and extra innings.

However today, I don’t use paper anymore, about 6 or 7 seasons ago I started keeping score on my Palm. It’s so much easier to do it digitally, as you don’t have to worry about running out of space for extra innings, you don’t have to worry about where all the substitutions are going to go in those 18-4 blowout games where everyone is subbed out or moved around… Plus you can keep a theoretical unlimited amount of games in there. For me, it’s the only way to go. The software I use is called “Scorepad”, and can be obtained here One caveat, though. The stuff isn’t cheap. The full package is $169 (although when I bought it a few years back, it was $129). They do have a cheaper option if you only want to keep score on our Palm, and do not care about the desktop app – that version is only $39 (plus they have other options inbetween, check out their store link.

But if you have a PalmOS handheld, and like to score, you really should look into this. It’s good software. I took a picture of myself a few years ago, here’s what it looked like on my Palm at a game. You can click on it to go to a larger image where you can more clearly make out the screen.

UPDATE: Given I wrote about Scorepad, and keeping score, I decided to score Friday night’s game (Jun 1st) against the Mariners. I got a wild game to keep track of, and I’ll write more about the game on Saturday (it’s 2AM, and I’m exhausted), but I wanted to update my scoring entry here with some examples of what Scorepad generates. After the game was over, I synced the game back to the desktop application, and then I could look at it there. The desktop app has the ability to export the data to a box score HTML page, as well as a play by play HTML page. Both are here, as well as screen captures of a few places from the desktop app. Here’s a list of what I have here:

Now, the pitch sequence is where this program can get seriously hardcore. I don’t use this, because even for me, it’s a lot to keep track of. Not only do you keep track of each pitch, but you can also keep track of what kind of pitch it is, where it was in the zone, and what the speed was. Now, I don’t do this, because it’s even more information than I can keep track of (or care to). However, this software is also used by several major league baseball teams by their official scorekeepers, as well as numerous minor league and softball leagues, so it can be used to keep track of everything – it’s seriously powerful stuff.
I didn’t start off to write this article as piece on how much I loved Scorepad, it was more about my love of the actual scoring, not the facilitating software. I guess the two subjects are pretty well intertwined, though. :)