Got a little behind with some real life stuff, going to take a break from updating for the Tigers series. See ya early next week.

Well, there were two innings worth talking about in this game. The first one is the third inning, and the other is the ninth.
The third was notable because of the big huge 8 spot we put on the board. This was capped off by a grand slam by Ranger outfielder Nelson Cruz. This apparently was the first time that Cruz ever came to the plate with the bases loaded as a major leaguer, and he hit a line drive grand slam over the left field wall. That wasn’t the only run Cruz scored that inning, as he was driven in on a two run home run by Ian Kinsler. Kinsler’s home run was interesting because it came a pitch or two after what would have been a caught stealing for Cruz, which was negated when home plate umpire Sam Holbrook nullifed the play on his own umpire’s interference. That was a very good inning for us.
The top of the 9th was set up by some fun in the bottom of the 8th. Mike Young was hit by a Kevin Gregg pitch. Brandon Donnelly relieved Gregg, and immediately hit Freddie Guzman with a pitch, and was ejected. In the top of the ninth, the Rangers brought on Scott Feldman to pitch the ninth, and the submarine pitcher was later discovered to be a submarine puncher, too. This was when Adam Kennedy was plunked, charging the mound, clearing the benches.
The brawl wasn’t a really long drawn out one, in fact, as bench clearing brawls go, it was pretty tame, not a lot of those secondary and tertiary fights you usually see. But it’s always entertaining to watch these things. Best moment of the fight for me was Mark DeRosa’s football style tackle of Adam Kennedy who got plunked pretty well by Scott Feldman, who punches sidearmed too. It wasn’t quite the pasting that Nolan Ryan gave to Robin Ventura, but Feldman’s pounding of Kennedy can pretty much be seen in the photo here. Kennedy didn’t get much (if anything) on Feldman before being tackled to the ground by Mark DeRosa.
Of course, all this was set up by Vicente Padilla yesterdaay, and also Adam Eaton a week or so ago, so there’s been a lot of beanball between the teams lately. Will make for an interesting end run of the season, if this stuff is still hanging around.
On to Detroit where we meet Kenny Rogers & Pudge again tomorrow.

I didn’t see much of this game, so I won’t have a lot to say, just a couple of the bullet points.

• Vicente Padilla was ejected for throwing at Angels batters. I honestly didn’t realize that, as I had missed that bit of the game, and for some reason never caught any mention of it in the bits I did see. Word came down on Wed that the Rangers aren’t happy with the way it came down and are talking about suspending Pidente over that.
• We added four more doubles to our doubles pile.
• We had four home runs, including Matt Stairs’ first as a Ranger.

That’s about all I have for this one. Better hit the official recap link below for further details.

Here’s an image I haven’t been able to break out in awhile; my sweep image. But it was a good sweep, as it was four games against an opponent inside our own division. This is always good. Now it was just the Mariners, who were behind us, but it’s always good to put some room between you and anyone in your division. Although I don’t think anyone’s worried about the Pittsburgh Pirates or Kansas City Royals sneaking up on them in the standings. Mariners are a little closer than that, so four games helps.
Behind a freshly shaven Kevin Millwood, the Rangers gave up a two spot in the second, but took the lead back straight away with a 3 run bottom of the inning. This was fueled by a bases loaded double by Gary Matthews (who was thrown out trying to strech it into a triple). But it was enough to give us the lead. Millwood gave up another run in the top of the third on a sac fly, but that’s all he would give up for the game.
After that we got to Felix Hernandez for three more in the bottom of the fifth, and after another in the bottom of the sixth on a wild pitch, Felix was gone. However, that wasn’t it. We scored again in the seventh and eighth to widen our lead to 9-3.
Rick Bauer, who seemed a lock awhile back to have the 8th inning setup role has become shaky lately. He gave up three more runs in his 1.2 innings of work. In fact, I think I remember seeing Aki get up becaue of Bauer’s performance. But we got the win, and the sweep, no matter how rocky the 9th looked.
We had five more doubles as a team to load on top of our massive mound of them this year. Mike Young had a triple. Nobody had a home run. But Millwood went 6 and got a win.
More imprortantly we’ve shown we can handle the Mariners, which will be helpful as we go down the stretch.