My wife and I got to the game much later than I normally do. I’m normally in my seat at 6PM for a 7PM game, I didn’t leave Garland until 6PM for this one. Got there just in time to see the first pitch ceremony, which was thrown out by a surprise – Geddy Lee and Alex Liefson of Rush. That was a cool surprise – they’re in town for a concert on Wed night.
As the game got started, I sat there thinking what a lot of folks are right now. It’s June 22nd, and the Rangers are in first place!! That was a nice feeling, and it must have translated to the field, as we got out early. We loaded up the bases in the bottom of the first, and Teixeira singled in a couple, and we never looked back. Ryan Drese pitched as well as I’d seen him this season. He did give up a longball to John Olerud, but bases empty – and there’s no shame in giving one up to Olerud.
Rod Barajas continued his power stroke, jacking his 10th of the season, more than tripling has career season high, and we’re not halfway through yet. That’s the third game in a row for Barajas with a HR. The team record is 5, set twice last season by Carl Everett & Arod. However, the big stamp of this game came in the 6th, when we put up a 6 spot, highlighted by a 3 run triple by Mike Young.
There was some great defense in this game, and some not so good (two errors by Soriano). Overall, was a nice game, the weather was nice, in the mid 70’s at the ballpark. For June 22nd, there was nothing wrong with this night at the game at all, especially the time it took to play. Started at 7:09, and ended at 9:27. Nice quick game. Hell, even the garlic fries were great!!

Kenny Rogers did his usual surrender of a run or two in the first inning, but was brilliant after that. In fact, the whole game was a pitcher’s duel, not terribly a lot going on for either side In fact, the game score remained 2-1 in favor of Texas until the bottom of the ninth when Cordero blew his second save of the season. Annoying, but I didn’t feel like we were going to lose – just had a good feeling by this point. I did feel bad for Kenny, he should be 11-2 now, and the two no decisions he had this week were both on blown saves by Cordero – his only two.
In the top of the 11th, Hank Blalock jacked a two run home run to win the game (in fact, our other two runs came on a two run HR by Barajas). That’s how it ended. A 4-2 win over the Marlins.
So we swept the defending World Champions on their turf. After losing all three to the Reds, I have to say this is very encouraging. We could have rather easily been 6-0 on this road trip, we played well against the Reds, just not well enough. Against the Marlins, we found the ways to win, and we come back home just one half a game out of first. At this point last year, we were 21.5 games out. What a turnaround.
The other thing for me personally is that since I’m from Philadelphia, having Florida lose all three games here puts the Phillies in first place, and drops the Marlins to second – \o/ :)

First off, the pitch counts on my own score stuff aren’t right. The reason is that the rain delay that happened in the middle of the game forced my recording to not have the entire game. I always bump baseball games by an extra hour, but that wasn’t enough – I got cut off I think after one out in the top of the 8th. I had to retro score the end of the game.
Too busy on Monday to really write a lot, but it was nice to see Cordero get another save. This was the game I full well expected to lose, I didn’t think we’d beat Dontrelle Willis, but we did. We also jacked a few home runs off of him (Mench, Barajas). Was a bit of a sloppy game, with 5 errors. Our two came on the same play – one of those plays you see in pee-wee baseball, with the ball being thrown all over the place, allowing everyone to score. Ugh.
Nice to come out on top, though.

The pitching carousel is swinging again – this time stopping on John Wasdin, with Erasmo Ramirez getting off and sitting on the AAA bench. And it looked like Carlos Almanzar might have to do the same thing, as he did his “stick my hand up after a ball hit up the middle” move again, and had to come out of the game. This is probably one of the biggest uses of the DL I can remember in years. It might not be numbers wise, but it sure feels like it.
Given the way the last few games have gone, as we got to the 6th inning with a lead of only 2-0, you expected them to blow it. But we didn’t. Wasdin was quite good, and probably will get another start because of this performance. Almanzar, Francisco, & Mahay combined to throw two shutout innings in relief to seal the game.
Offensively, it was nice to see Fullmer in there doing well, as is bat has been hot lately. Defensively, we turned four double plays (including one to end the game) – something that’s always nice to see. Soriano had a great leaping snare of a line drive late in the game, too.
This was a well played game, and it reminded me a lot of the way we were playing in April.

Disappointing. That’s about all I can say about this one. Good thing Anaheim and Oakland lost too, otherwise it’d be more disappointing. I suppose the annoying this is that we got beat by a pitcher who makes a $2.5 million salary – of which the Rangers are paying $2.2mil of. :(
I don’t hold out a lot of hope that we’ll turn it around against the Marlins, either. One amusing thing, I had the game on MLB.com’s Gameday while I was listening, and briefly saw this. Got a laugh out of it.

Sigh.
Good:
Nick Bierbrodt did better than I think anyone expected.
Couple of solo home runs
The rest of the AL West lost, too.
The bobblehead joke with Tom Grieve on TV
Bad:
No one on base for the couple of home runs.
Bullpen didn’t do it’s job
When one of my “good” things is a bobblehead joke.
We’ve lost three in a row again

Several things came to an end today.. Kenny Rogers’ streak of winning after a loss (although it wasn’t his fault). Our perfect record in extra inning games this year, Francisco Cordero’s streak of no blown saves, Hank Blalock’s streak of starting the games at third, Brad Fullmer’s not having played the field.. there were more, but I’ve forgotten them as I sit here to write this. Our pitching staff is all over the place at he moment, but tonight’s game didn’t seem that poorly pitched to me.
Kenny went 6 innings, and gave up 2 runs on 6 hits with 5 k’s. We used six other pitchers for a combined 4.1 innings pitched, and those guys gave up 3 runs on 8 hits – not terribly good. In fact, we would have lost the game sooner, if we didn’t have to magnificent plays to toss out Reds players at the plate. Barajas had a busy night back there behind the dish – and it looked good.
Alfonso Soriano had a huge 3 run jack, followed up by a solo shot from Herb Perry. But that was all our scoring – and it all came in the fourth. Looking at the starting pitcher and the bullpen situation for the Reds, I expected us to score 17 runs, but they shut us down pretty good overall, except for the fourth.
And the way we lost in the end was really frustrating. Doug Brocail was the last pitcher on the mound for us, but I didn’t think that loss was Brocail’s fault. He did what he was supposed to do. Get a ground ball. I think Showalter overmanaged that – the ball was hit to where Soriano was going, but EY as an extra infielder ran right in front of Soriano and booted it. I really don’t think tonight’s loss was Brocail’s fault.
Having said that – I don’t know why we’re even messing with him. He’s a reclamation project, and we don’t need reclamation projects at this point in the team’s history. Brocail will probably be the next pitcher to go when it’s time to bring someone else up after today’s move of Bierbrodt and Juan Dominguez.