Well, this game was cruising along nicely. Vicente Padilla and Joel Piniero were pitching a scoreless shutout through five innings. Things were nice. The Rangers then got a few runs in the sixth. Gary Matthews broke the ice with a home run to right field. We then loaded the bases, and Kevin Mench just missed a grand slam (and $25k for someone on the Sonic contest) by a few feet. Still, he got his first two RBI’s of the season on a double the scraped the top of the wall in the left field wall. It stayed that way, and Padilla was still in the game in the bottom of the seventh. He gave up a solo home run in the seventh, and game out having pitched an excellent game. Seven innings, only thee hits, and one earned run (the HR). He did walk three, but struck out seven.
Joaquin Benoit came on, and gave up two runs after a play that initially looked like a bad call, but was probably right (the ball that Adrian Brown in right trapped). Our pen couldn’t hold it again, and we went into the ninth 3-3. Eddie Guardardo came on, and he’s someone we always seem to have good success against. Eddie threw 38 pitches in the top of the ninth – a lot of stuff happened, and we did get one run off of him in the ninth, and it was on a walked in run.
In the bottom of the ninth Cordero came on after Tom Grieve was saying that he wasn’t supposed to pitch at all, but Buck Showalter showed some support for his closer and sending him back out there after getting slammed last night. The game ended on a nice defensive play by Hank Blalock and a nice pick by Mark Teixeira. But for me the play here was the pitching by Padilla. He was quite the pitcher we’ve needed the last few years tonight, and it’s a shame he got a no decision.
We come back home to Arlington with a winning road record. That’s a nice thing to have.

You know, I’m so mad at how this ended, I don’t feel like writing about it, despite the fact that I do have time to write about this one.

Stupid busy at work today, no time to write anything.

This was definitely two games in one. The first game seemed to run from the start till the seventh inning. It was a great pitchers duel. Kameron Loe went 7 innings for the Rangers, giving up one unearned run on 5 hits. Dan Haren went 8 plus innings, giving up 1 run on four hits. A good pitcher’s duel.
Then it got into the bullpen. Otsuka did not do well, giving up a couple of runs in .2 IP. However, Houston Street was terrible, giving up FOUR runs in his .2 IP in relief. THat was the difference. We did have a couple of home runs in the game late for the win. One was a two run shot by Tex, which wasn’t a surprise.
However, the other one was far more comical, envoking memories of Jose Canseco’s ball off the head home run. Milton Bradley had a ball hit by D’Angelo Jimenez in his glove, and then “pushed” it over the fence for a home run. If he hadn’t have touched that ball, no home run, but the only reason Jimenez got his first Ranger home run was thanks to Mr Bradley. It was pretty comical to watch. :)
Not much else to say about this one, as today was my daughter’s first birthday, and I watched this game in about 20 minutes in high speed on the TiVo. :)
Our first series win of the season. That’s good.

This game can be summed up in just a few words. Padilla. Home Run.
While obviously more went on in this game, it will hinge on the fact that Padilla gave up three consecutive home runs to the A’s in the 6th. In all, Padilla went 5+ innings, gave up 8 hits (four of which were home runs) while walking one and striking out four. Obviously not his best start with us. Jack Benoit and CJ Wilson combined to pitch the other three innings, and didn’t give up any more. Sure, we could have scored more runs in the final three innings, and didn’t. But it just felt like the game was over in the sixth inning.
On the other side of things, the A’s pretty much kept us in check. In the entire game, we had just five hits total. One of them was a three run home run by Phil Nevin. We never got much sustained offense in this game.
As I said before, home run. Padilla. Game over.

I won’t have much time to write about this one. The reason is I had to get up at 3:30AM for Easter Church responsibilities on Friday morning, so by the time this game rolled around, I was dead to the world tired. I fell asleep during the game, and I didn’t see the back end of it util about 8:20AM on Saturday morning. Now I’m off to the aiport to pick up my mother in law who will be in for my daughter’s first birthday tomorrow.
Zito helped more than the Rangers helped themselves, as he was wild, and definitely not “Zito”. Still, I’ll take the win just fine. :)