Edinson Volquez had a great outing. He had just one mistake, a home run ball to Molina onto Greens Hill. But Edinson had a great line, even if it was short. He came out after five innings, having only thrown 74 pitches. But when he was in there, he was good. No walks, two strikeouts. There were six hits, but that didn’t seriously impact him, save for the home run, obviously. Our bullpen pitched well, too, not allowing any runs and no walks over four innings, gave up just one hit. It’s hard to do better than that.
But Los Angeles Anaheim did. Their bullpen also didn’t allow any runs in the 5 innings of relief they tossed. Anaheim starter Kelvim Escobar had to come out of the game after four innings, having given up just two hits and one run (an RBI single by DeRosa in the fourth). Anaheim’s pitching kept the Rangers to just 5 hits in all, and just the lone run, adding another loss to a rather disappointing home season this year.
Not much else to talk about from this one, the Angels shut us down pretty well.

Kevin Millwood pitched well again, giving some more cedence to the recent theory that it’s the 100 degree heat that’s been the cause of his problems in Arlington. Kevin picked up his 15th win of the season behind a 7 inning, 7 hit, 2ER performance. I didn’t see most of it, as it was on at the bowling alley during my league night, and I have a seriously hard time paying attention there. :)
Justin Verlander, the Tigers uber rookie this season looks (along with most of the rest of the team) to be out of gas this season. Verlander, who won me several games on some of my fantasy teams, was quite “Mark Clarkish” this game, going just 4.1IP, giving up 10 hits, 6ER, and a home run. We pretty much teed off on him. Former starter Mike Maroth also got hit a bit, as did Jason Grilli.
Anyway, the big story of the night anyway wasn’t any of that. It was Gary Matthews. He hit the third cycle in Rangers history, and I believe the first natural one. Single, Double, Triple, Home Run – in that order. Boy, if we don’t make a huge push to resign Matthews, it’ll be a major mistake. I’d have to look up the numbers, but hasn’t he outproduced Carlos Lee during Lee’s time here? But Matthews hitting for the cycle was cool – got lead coverage on most national baseball outlets last night, including mlb.com.
We also had five home runs this game. Two by Carlos Lee, Matt Stairs, Gary Matthews, & Mike Young. Stairs’ HR was a big majetic looking thing to the bleachers in the right field power alley.
Mike Young comes back to Arlington with 197 hits. I’m going to Friday night’s game, so hopefully he doesn’t get 3 tonight and get to 200 on Thursday. :)

This was a pretty darn good pitching duel by both starters, and both of their starts were wasted. One could make the point that Rogers’ wasn’t, as the Tigers won, but I’m referring to the point of neither starter getting a win – that’s a “wasted start” to me.
Vicente Padilla: 7IP, 5H, 2ER, 2HR
Kenny Rogers: 7IP, 10H, 2ER, 1HR
In fact, of the five runs scored this game for both sides, 4 of them came from solo home runs. The game moved pretty darn quickly. We did make a few gaffes running the bases, including Carlos Lee trying to go to second from first on a flyball to left. In fact, we had the leadoff batter get to first in the first three innings, only to be wiped out by a double play.
But we lost the game on a walkoff home run by Carlos Guillen (his second of the night) off of Ron Mahay. Disappointing loss, as the Rangers certainly pitched well enough to win the game.

Didn’t get to see any of this game, as I had a lot of church events going on this day, and what free time I had was spent watching football.
Go Jaguars. ;)

This was a very well pitched game, with both starters having lines like this:
Robinson Tejeda: 6.2IP, 2R, 1ER, 4H, 7K, 2BB
Jarrod Washburn: 6IP, 1ER, 6H, 5K, 2BB
There was a gaggle of relievers in this game (7 for Texas, 6 for Seattle). Most of them were fine. However, JJ Putz for Seattle gave up a key run, and then John Rheiecker was charged with another run, but Rhein’s was worse as the game was lost on that one.
I didn’t see the end of this game, as I had fallen asleep by that point. :)

This game was actually very well pitched, except for three half innings. Those would be the bottom of the fifth, the bottom of the eighth, and the top of the ninth.
Kevin Millwood actually pitched a quality start (technically), going 6 innings, giving up 3 runs. Jack Benoit pitched a scoreless seventh, but then Frank Francisco, fresh off the DL after Tommy John surgery, gave up two runs in his 0.2 IP. It took Rheinecker & Bauer to complete the other 1/3 of an inning, and the two of them gave up two hits and two runs to do it. The big problem was the grand slam that Rick Bauer gave up. Come to think of it, all 7 runs the Mariners got were on home runs. The three in the 5th were a 3 run home run, and the four in the 8th were a grand slam.
Cha Seung Baek looked good, going 7, shutting out the Rangers on four hits. Joel Piniero struggled a bit in the 9th, gave up a few hits and a couple of runs, but the Rangers really weren’t in this offensively at all.
At least that old guy fan who wears the blue hat got to throw out the first pitch. ;)

Well, this was another game that I never got to see all of, because I went to bed before it was over. In fact, when I woke up, I had no idea what the final score was. Actually I did, I had seen it, because it was the current score in the bottom of the sixth. :)
The Texas offense was powered by Mark DeRosa who is likely to cash in with someone on a good contract for 2007 (sure hope it’s with us). Mark had a three run home run in the top of the third inning to put us up 4-0 at the time. We actually should have been up by more than this, as we wasted a couple of good scoring opportunities early (including a bases loaded no out one in the first, which we got nothing from).
During this, Adam Eaton was rolling along putting up zeroes until the bottom of the fifth when Nick Swisher broke up the shutout with a home run over Gary Matthews’ head in center field. Still, Eaton was looking good. However, we danced around Frank Thomas too many times, as Thomas walloped a three run home run in the bottom of the sixth to make the score 5-4.
And that was the game, except for 3.1 innings of scoreless relief by our bullpen which allowed us to hang on and get the win over the A’s. But as I said earlier, it’s a little too late, I can’t see us climbing out of the hole we’re in to overtake the Angels and the A’s to win the division, which is the only way into the postseason for the AL West now.