This game was the first Rangers game to be on the radio with our Ranger broadcasters! That is a moment of great celebration for me. However, for the 2005 season, I had to miss it. The reason is that this afternoon, my wife had a baby shower, and it was at our house, so I had to spend the afternoon dodging estrogen, and baseball wasn’t really on the radar. :)
From reading the boxscore, I see that Soriano had his first action of the spring, although he didn’t do anything, he had a big ofer. Ricardo Rodriguez looks like he’s coming along extremely well, possibly headed towards a spot in the starting rotation based on today’s performance and his work so far this spring. That’s really nice considered how his season ended last year. Big shame that was in 04 for RicRod. He went two innings, and had no runs scored, and struck out 4, which was nice to see. In fact, all of our pitching today was great, except for Veras, who gave up all three runs the Royals scored. Wasdin, Mahay, Hughes, & Erasmo Ramirez all gave up nothing in their sessions. Nice to see that.
Offensivesly, we didn’t have the 17 run explosion that happened yesterday, but we had 5 runs, and both Mike Young and Richard Hidalgo led the charge, both going 2 for 3. Gerald Laird also added a solo home run. Seems like a pretty balanced attack.
I would have liked to have listened to the game, though, even though we got a boatload of baby stuff from some VERY generous friends and family members.
View my complete update for this game here.

Ranger management is on record as saying that Chan Ho Park has to earn his roster spot this year, that he’s not going to be guaranteed it just because he has a boatload of cash invested. He did not help himself on Friday. Chan Ho went two innings, gave up 3ER, 5 hits, including one home run. Now granted, we gave up a total of 13 runs, so Park wasn’t the only one with a bad line. But of the 5 Ranger pitchers who gave up runs (we had 7 total), Park is the only one threatened with a loss of a roster spot if he doesn’t pitch well. And I’m sure most Ranger fans would probably cheer his release. I’m kind of ambivalent towards it. Sure, I want to team to do good, and he’s not helping, but I saw the festive atmosphere from the Korean fans when he WAS doing good, and I wished it could have been something that worked. Oh well. If he has another of these, I suspect the talk will probably start in earnest about letting him go.
If I read the box score right, we only actually had two home runs to account for the 17 runs we had. Mench & Adrian Gonzalez were both 3 for 4, and …. aw hell, there’s too much offense to just list it – check the box score below. I didn’t write this until about 36 hours after the game was played, so I have not much to add, but it definitely was nice to see a win, even if we did give up a boatload ourselves.
View my complete update for this game here.

Official Spring training games start! Unfortunately, as anyone who has read my site for the last few years knows, these games are torture, since they’re not on TV or on radio. You can sit on one of the major baseball sites and refresh the scoreboard, but that’s nowhere near as much fun. It also makes it hard to write about the games. :)
We lost the opener 6-4 against our Arizona roomates the KC Royals. We used five pitchers in this game. Two of them (Chris Young, Erasmo Ramirez) gave up nothing in their innings of work. Starter Kenny Rogers gave up one, and RA Dickey gave up two, but only one was earned. Kameron Loe however, didn’t fare too well. In his 1.2 innings of work, he gave up 5 hits, and 3 earned runs. Loe did have three strikeouts, though.
Offensively, newcomer Richard Hidalgo made a mark with a home run and a sac fly, for 2 RBI’s. We only had 10 hits, and no one player had more than one, which might have contributed to the 11 runners we left on base. Soriano didn’t play, but otherwise, the starting lineup appeared to be what the projected starting day lineup will be. Kinsler and Arias had doubles, and Ruddy Yan was caught stealing.
From what I can read from the boxscore, a lackluster start to the official beginning of spring training.
View my complete update for this game here.