Taking a short break from writing a recap due to illness in the family. This is a placeholder page.
I remember seeing the box score right after this game happened (I’m writing this 3 days later), and thinking “Well, there goes the honeymoon with McCarthy”. I’m sure there’s a cadre of Rangers fans that would only think trading John Danks was worth it if McCarthy had no bad outings all season, and won the Cy Young award. He had a bad spring outing, and I’m sure these people are all going “SEE!” :)
McCarthy did have a horrendous outing, giving up 5 hits, 1 walk, and 7 earned runs in two innings of work. On the flip side, a guy who I almost want to pitch like McCarthy did (Bruce Chen) had the line that people expected McCarthy to have, that being 3IP, 4H, 0ER. It scares me that Bruce Chen might win the fifth spot. I’ve followed him since his days in Philly, and he looks great joining another team, and then gets torched.
The Rangers runs came in bunches. Two 4 run innings, and one three. However, 7 of them were unearned. All four Neal Cotts gave up were unearned, as were the three that their reliever Wells gave up. So we had some help in winning this one. Lots of home runs in this game for both sides, but then again, with 20 runs, you figure to have some. 11 of our 15 hits were by four players (Kinsler 2, Byrd 3, Young 4, Sosa 2), the rest were scattered. Ian Kinsler has seemed decent all spring, actually. That’s a good feeling.

[Read more…]

Taking a short break from writing a recap due to illness in the family. This is a placeholder page.
After looking at this again a few days later, it would seem that Vicente Padilla did not have a good game. His line shows six hits, two walks and three earned runs in three innings. Oakland’s starter (Dan Haren) did not fare that poorly, giving up just one run in his three innings of work. Frank Francisco, who has been reportedly not so great to start the spring tossed a shutout inning of work and got the win in the game, actually. AJ Murray struck out two of the three batters he faced, and Joaquin Benoit chipped in with a scoreless couple of innings of his own. German & Galarraga (the guys not likely to be with us come April) gave up the rest of the runs the Rangers allowed.
On the other side, we had three doubles and a triple. No home runs though, but enough singles to come through from behind and beat the A’s 7-6. Catalanotto and Botts were both 2-2 today, Sosa & Kinsler were 2-3. No real “leader” on offense this game.

[Read more…]

Another box score only game. No radio coverage with the Rangers, or with the opponent via MLB’s Gameday Audio. So much so that the Official Rangers site had a “Live box score” link on their site; that was the only way to “watch” the game.
Anyway, early on, it seemed like a rout after yesterday’s rout the other way. It was 9-1 after four innings. The big inning was of course the third where we put up a six spot. There were two home runs that inning, one from Gerald Laird, and Sammy Sosa’s second of the spring. This was all off Arizona starter Livan Hernandez, who also gave up a couple of doubles to Mark Teixeira & Kenny Lofton in his 3.1 innings of work. In all, Hernandez was on the hook for 10 hits, and all 9 Ranger runs (7 earned). The remainder of the Arizona bullpen kept the Rangers off the board in the 4.2 innings they pitched.
That’s significant, because the Rangers had one of their classic bullpen meltdowns late. The score was still 9-1 after six innings. Feeling good. Then after seven, they were up 9-5. OK, a four spot isn’t good, but we still have a comfortable lead. OK, after 8 it was 9-6. A tad concerned, but still not really worried. Then in the ninth it jumped to 9-8 – OH CRAP! While spring training games don’t give you a complete breakdown of what happened in what order, I can’t imagine that was fun to watch. I know a win is a win, and there’s all the platitudes of “these guys aren’t going to be with the club come April” (Cruceta, Vargas, Wood), and all that… But it seems a heck of a lot worse looking when watching it only on a linescore refresh on a website.
This isn’t helped by what I feel is way too many errors in the spring. Of the six official games we’ve played, only one was error free, and that was the 5-0 shutout of the Royals a couple of days ago. We’ve had a total of 8 errors so far in six games. When you have more errors than games played, things aren’t good. Yeah, yeah – it’s only game six, but I think you get my point.
G1: 2
G2: 1
G3: 0
G4: 1
G5: 2
G6: 2
On the positive side, John Koronka gave up nothing in his three innings of work. Kameron Loe gave up an unearned run in his three innings of work on 3 hits. Not bad for either of those guys. The wheels came off after that, but it was nice to see some zeros up there from guys who have a realistic shot of breaking camp with us.

[Read more…]

I actually got a chance to listen to this game on the radio. It was at work, and I saw that the Mariners radio coverage had this game on, and I was able to listen to it through my subscription to MLB Gameday Audio, so that was cool. The Mariners broadcasters were much better than some of the other “away” guys I’ve listened to – sometimes even though I can listen to a game in spring training, I don’t want to, because the announcers are horrendous!
Anyway, for most of this game, I was thinking that I was going to write a short piece on how much the Rangers hitters got donut. For the longest time, we had just one hit, and it took awhile to get that one. We went down 4-0 in the seventh, but managed to make a game out of it in the seventh, putting up a 3 spot. But it went downhill in the 9th, when we gave up a really ugly 6 spot, which was helped along by an error by Drew Meyer.
Our first blowout of the spring. Even though we were close in the 7th, it never felt like a game we should win from the start. This was the first win of the spring for the Mariners too – which is why the USS Mariner website was happy about it. :)

[Read more…]

This was the first game of the spring on TV, but it wasn’t quite the same. First off, the game was at 2PM, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to watch it. Second, it was the Rockies feed. For a TV starved baseball fan, it’s not bad, but it’s not “our guys”. In fact, when I got home from work, I tuned in the first inning or so, but stopped watching – I already knew what happened.
What did happen was a nice performance by Robinson Tejeda (who the Rockies’ announcers kept calling him Tejada, as in Miguel). Robinson went two innings (which seems to be the limit for any pitcher these first half dozen games or so), and gave up just two hits and no runs. From what I saw on TV, he looked sharp, although the Rockies coverage kept cutting to interviews with their players (not surprising). We again got good pitching from the rest of our staff used today. In fact, the two runs that Colorado got were unearned (off of Frankie Francisco). Frankie gave up a hit and two walks in his lone frame of work. Nobody else gave up any runs, which is encouraging. Our pitchers used Monday were Tejada, Josh Rupe, Francisco, Joaquin Benoit, Wes Littleton, AJ Murray, & Steven Rice. All zeroes (except Francisco).
Offensively, we scored our runs in three innings (third, fourth, seventh). Jerry Hairston & Ian Kinsler led the way, both going 2 for 3 and an RBI. The offensive theme of doubles that existed in 2006 was evident in this game too, as Brad Wilkerson, Ian Kinsler, & even Desi Relaford got one. Jason Botts cracked a triple, and Miguel Ojeda (our likely backup catcher in 07) hit one over the fence, too. Kinsler however, had five RBI for the day, which was the most of anyone.
I scanned through the game and saw some of this via the Colorado coverage. It’d be nice to see our TV guys sooner in the spring than later.

[Read more…]

Game 3 of the spring was one I didn’t get to listen to at all. I was tied up almost all afternoon with church duties, which is good. I love the Lord and am happy to serve, but it does sometimes push other things aside, which for today was the Rangers game. Didn’t hear any of it. So we’re onto another recap based on reading a box score after the fact. :)
The biggest story (for me, not for national writers) was how well the Rangers pitching was. Obviously a shutout is always good, but looking down the respective stats in the box score, we gave up only three hits and walked just two. That’s five baserunners for Kansas City for the entire game. Quite an accomplishment.
Brandon McCarthy was by all accounts the pitcher we thought he’d be when we sent away John Danks. He’s gonna have to be for some of the Ranger fans to accept that trade going forward. In fact, if you go just by line scores, McCarthy, Scott Feldman, & Franklyn German all had the same line. Two innings pitched, one hit, no runs. However, something’s not right there, as the Ranger box score for pitching only shows seven innings pitched, that’s not right. Two innings are missing from the box score. :) Edit: Oh wait, in looking at another box score, it appears Bruce Chen also pitched, and he was better, going two innings, giving up no hits. :)
Offensively, the big headline was that Sammy Sosa got his first home run of the spring. Several wire stories were glad to point out that it was his first home run since August 4, 2005 when he was with Baltimore. That was Sammy’s only hit of the day, but it got more attention than the other numbers for our team (Marlon Byrd 2-3, Joaquin Arias 2-2, Nate Gold 2-4, Ian Kinsler 1-1 with HR, 2 RBI). If Sosa makes the team (which my gut feeling is he will unless he totally tanks in March), then we’ll be hearing a lot about Sosa’s 1-5 instead of someone going 3-4 with 5 RBI’s.
But I will look at this as a very well pitched game, not one about Sosa’s home run. Makes me feel good about taking Brandon McCarthy on the two fantasy drafts I’ve participated in so far. :)

[Read more…]