Well, it was another game affected by the presence of #11 on the mound.  This game was not originally scheduled to be broadcast.  However, since Darvish was toeing the hill, it was added on.  Before I get into anything about this game, given it was a last minute, apparently the broadcasters were last minute, too.  This had what I consider to be the dream team.  We had Eric Nadel on play by play, and Tom Grieve on color.  If it were up to me, THIS would be the broadcast team for BOTH radio and TV.  Do what some other teams do – don’t have separate broadcaster teams.  That’s unlikely to happen though, given Nadel’s lack of desire to be on TV.  Oh well.  At least I got to see it for a few innings anyway.    That was before I got bored with the game and started tweeting people’s phone numbers.  ;)

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Got to see this game – I’m getting spoiled. hahaha.  Seriously, though, it was nice seeing the Rangers on TV, and it was even better seeing an outing like that from Matt Harrison.  Matt’s one of those guys you always hoped would work out, but at least for me, I never thought it was a lock he would.  I want him to succeed.  I would love nothing better than for it to work, if for no other reason than to make the Saltamacchia trade with the Braves look that much better.

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Well, it was technically “cancelled”, not rained out.  Rained out implies it will be made up.  This won’t.  It wasn’t official yet, so none of the activities count in spring training records.  Shame, though as David Murphy & Brad Hawpe hit home runs before the game was wiped out.

Hey, a game I finally got to see!

I was looking around on mlb.tv early this afternoon, and noticed that the Rangers game was actually viewable there.  I know they don’t black out anything during Spring Training, but I still didn’t know the game was on anyway, so it was quite the nice surprise to see it there.  I started late, but I did watch the game.  Broke out the iPad, and scored my first game of 2012.  As is my usual policy on Spring Training Games, I’ll keep up with all the changes the best I can.  For the Rangers I try a bit harder.  For the opponent, I’ll do it if it’s an easy/obvious change.  More often than not, double switches aren’t even mentioned in coverage.  Especially if they’re made during the time some executive is plopped in the booth to yammer on about stuff we don’t care about (like how many hotel rooms there are in Las Vegas, or why a certain kind of treat was taken off the Dairy Queen menu).  Both of those happened this game.  But I don’t want to get into a full fledged rant.  Just to say that for the other team, I’ll keep track of the pitcher, but mostly I leave their starting lineup intact through the end of the game.  Works much easier.

Anyway, about the game..

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The Rangers played two games today.  This one is the one that I didn’t hear or see anything about.  Generally you don’t get to “witness” both split squad games, one of them is the odd man out.  This was the odd man out game.

This game had decent pitching at the start, and at the end.  But the middle three innings..  not so much.  Scott Feldman started this one, and went into the fifth inning.   From the looks of things, he was pretty decent early on.  But he ran out of gas when he got into the fifth.  He allowed a single run in the fourth, not a big deal, but ended up with five earned runs on his ledger.   Wasn’t 100% his fault, Uehara allowed one of those runs to score.   Not that Koji did much better.

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Darnit.  I’m annoyed already.  Come on guys.  Get with it.   I think I’ll post these pictures of Travis Hafner, Esteban Yan, Mark Petkovsek, and our patron saint, Mark Clark as Rangers for no good reason.   It’s more interesting than these losses this week!