Ryan Dempster continues to show that he’s been a great pickup, and someone I want to see the Rangers make a run at for 2013.   Dempster went seven innings, and allowed just two runs on seven hits and one walk.  Struck out eight.   Striking out batters seems to be a strong point by our pitching staff overall this season.  Not like we strike out 10+ batters each game, but we’re doing it a lot more often than before.

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Our most consistant pitcher of the year took the hill for this game, that being Matt Harrison.   Matt wasn’t terribly strong, but hung in there long enough to get the win.  He came out of the game before the end of the sixth, but he did have the lead for the required five, so Matt notched his 16th win of the season.  He’s having quite the season, so I thank the Atlanta Braves again for that load for Mark Teixeira.

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Nelson Cruz & David Murphy had singles.  That’s IT.   James Shields just shut us down.   Two singles, no walks, struck out eight times.  Our offense did nothing.

Roy Oswalt started this, and is probably done.  Two innings, six hits, four earned runs, just ugh.

Bleargh for this one.

Jurickson Profar!   Should we buy into it totally at this point?  :)

It was a big pitching duel for sure.  Yu Darvish pitched awesome, but got a no decision.  Eight innings, two hits and two runs (just one earned).  Eight strikeouts and two walks on 96 pitches.  He deserved a win.  Didn’t get it.  But at least we got one.     The Rays only had three hits total.  Two by Darvish, one by Mike Adams.  Was a great pitching performance all around.  I would have been very annoyed if we didn’t at least get the win.

Josh Hamilton got his 40th home run of the season, a two run shot in the 4th inning.  Geovany Soto had a double, but the most important hit was the one hit that Jurickson Profar got in the 10th inning, a two run one that won the game.   Didn’t get to see it, wish I would have.

Given I just talked about extra innings a lot the last few games, I go and get one of these, that usually make me review the game with “Shit!”.   So I’m not going to say much, because we lose in a walkoff on the road.

But I’d be remiss in not talking about Derek Holland, who rocked this game.  8 innings, just two hits allowed.   One of the hits was a solo home run for the run.   Walked two, but struck out eleven in eight innings.   Oh, Michael Young got a home run – not something he does often.

Mark Lowe blew it at the end and lost the game.   Shit.

I normally dislike extra innings games, as I’ve said before, because most of the time it feels like we lose them in the 10th inning.   There’s a feeling that it’s more “sudden death”, and if we get behind, it’s over.  So I like it a lot when we win in extra innings – it feels more “earned” or something.  :) [Read more…]

Taking a pass on this one.  Please check the mlb recap.

Ugh.  That’s two not good outings in a row for Matt Harrison.  Not liking that.

Elvis Andrus had a home run.  I liked that.   That was about it, though.

The Rangers go into Kansas City, a mild “house of horrors” in recent years, and seemingly weren’t bothered by that.   They were up 6-0 going into the bottom of the 6th before they surrendered any runs at all.   Yu Darvish got another win.   It was a good win for the Rangers.  Any win is a good win, of course, but this one in particular I liked because it happened in Kansas City.

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