I’m feeling sick, so I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but I will say this.. Rodriguez allowed 8 runs, 4 earned. That’s 4 unearned runs, and just one error on our ledger. That must have been a whopper of an error. Game shortened by rain. That’s it for Surprise. We break camp tomorrow. No word on Mike Young’s contract extension, or Glendon Rusch’s situation as I write this at about 5:30PM on Wed.

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The less said about this one, the better.

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Well, the Rangers were back on TV. That was really cool to see. I love watching the Rangers almost as much as I love going to the ballpark to see them in person. But I loved watching them on TV. As is tradition with my wife and I, the first game (used to be radio, but it’s now TV) of the season is a baseball dinner. We had hot dogs, sauerkraut, beans, & chips. It was great watching the team again. And this year I have a new sofa to enjoy it on. :)

Anyway, the game itself. I watched our team play pretty well. I thought Colby Lewis pitched better than his line indicated. He went 5 innings, giving up 8 hits, and three earned runs. Thing is, several of the hits he gave up were the cheap blooper kind. If those hadn’t happened, he would ahve had a great line. He made me feel good. Out of the pen, Ryan Drese had one good inning, then had not much else, giving up four earned runs in 3 innings, although really in two, as his first inning he only needed something like 7 pitches. Carlos Almanzar looked smoking out of the pen in the 9th, I say he’s in the pen to start the season, too.

Offensively, two of our three runs came from the longball. Mike Young had a solo home run, as did Hank Blalock. We were close on a few, and probably would have had more if Soriano wasn’t thrown out at third stealing. Overall, was a really nice feeling to watch the Rangers on TV. As I write this, it’s less than a week until the official start of the season, and 11 days till I’m back at the Ballpark for a game. :)

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Mickey Callaway and Doug Brocail were not very good. Between the two of them, they gave up 13 hits & 8 earned runs over the 6 combined innings they pitched. Joaquin Benoit pitched again, as a test to see how his endurance would be as a reliever pitching several days in a row. He gave up nothing in his one inning.

Offensively, we never really got a lot going. Our best performance was Herb Perry going 2 for 3. We only had four other hits the rest of the day, scattered amongst for other players. One of them was a home run by Jason Bourgeois.

Basically, not a very good game. :)

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Chan Ho Park turned in another performance that makes one think that he might be at least decent during the season instead of the steaming pile he’s been the last two years. But he did good last Spring Training, so I’m not terribly excited yet. His line was 6 innings, 3 earned runs – technically a “quality start”. He did also only allow three hits over six innings, but one of ’em was a two run home run. 3 walks though.

Joaquin Benoit continues to make a case for himself out of the bullpen. He did well there again, and I’m convinced he’ll start there.

Offensively, it was the game of the longball. Of the seven runs scored total, 5 of them were the result of a home run. Three of ours were solo home runs, including the game winner by Laynce Nix. Nice to see the home runs come a bit more regularly.

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An extremely well pitched game. I’m writing this just as the game is ending, so I don’t have a box score yet. But the only run of the game was a home run by former Ranger farmhand Scott Podsednik. Overall a great pitching performance by the Ranger staff, something we need to see more often. Kenny Rogers went 6.2 innings, giving up just the lone run of the game. Quite quite the good start.

Not a whole lot more to write about anyway, even if I did see a box score. We didn’t have any offense the mattered (meaning runs), and our pitching was damn good, giving up just one run over 8 innings. I’ll take that any day. We just need more runs. We could have borrowed two from the earlier game today, still won that, and won this game, too. ;)

We have now lost the spring series against the Brewers 4-0. We got swept by them this spring.

It was nice to hear Eric Nadel on the radio instead of the guys from mlb.com. :)

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