We were almost singlehandedly beat by Carlos Delgado in this game – he had three home runs, only the second time an opponent has ever done that at the Ballpark in Arlington.
Jeff Zimmerman showed that he was a human being, getting his first ever loss, dropping to (oh damn ) 9-1, and his ERA is now a whopping 1.25.
Rick Helling continues to be the hard luck pitcher this season – he’s pitched as good as he did last year when he won 20 games, but got another no decision in this one, and his ERA is lower this year than it was last, it’s currently at 4.31.
Pudge had some great D again tonight with a pickoff and two caught stealings. He certainly increased his value in my eye as the team MVP. Zim is great, but I think Pudge brings more to the table.
Billy “stupidest beard in the majors” Koch looked good. Threw hard, and did his job. Still, he has the lamest excuse for a beard I’ve ever seen, though.

Due to my clueless cable company, and Fox Sports Southwest, I didn’t get to see the game. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to it on the radio, since I was so annoyed about that – I ended up watching “The Fifth Element” on DVD instead.
I did peek in from time to time to get a score update, and from all reports Loaiza was Loaiza. Was inconsistent, but had good stuff. Where have we heard that before? I feel comfortable about our starting pitching. It isn’t the greatest in the world, but it seems to be doing a decent enough of a job, especially with our pen doing so great. We’re now 23 games over 500, a number I never thought I’d see given my opinion of the state of the pitching at the start of the season.
After seeing the Twins for the last few days, I have to admit, I rather like Jacque Jones – he looks like a great kid, and if I was living in Minnesota, I’d be excited about seeing the team, even if they lose a lot. I like watching teams made up of young kids who try.
I’m really hoping we can keep this up the last two months, and end up with a situation where we don’t have to play the Yankees in the first round with the first two games in NY. Off day tomorrow, and then we’re back with more against the Toronto Blue Jays, who have made some recent noise in the AL East.

This game got out to a really fast start. We scored four runs in the first inning, then two in the second, and another in the third, putting us up 7-1 right away. It just “felt” like a blowout was on the way. We won, but we didn’t get a blowout. Mike Morgan allowed the Twins to creep back into the game.
Our four runs in the first came by us getting a whole slow of singles, after a leadoff error allowed Roberto Kelly to get on. Then Pudge, Rusty, Juan, Raffy, & Todd all singled to give us our runs in the first. Pudge had another great night at the plate, he’s just on fire offensively – he’s also got a 12 game hitting streak going, too. He was 4 for 5 with a run scored last night – he’s batting some atmospheric number (around 750 or something, isn’t it?) since the All-Star break.
Actually, we were outhit by the Twins 14-13. Of all these 27 hits, the bulk of them were singles. We had one double (Greer), one triple (Kelly), and one home run (Mateo). The rest were singles. Minnesota had four doubles, the rest were singles.
Mike Morgan got his 12th win of the year, who woulda thunk it? :)
On TV, we got to see the 15,000,000th fan ceremony. They picked someone and said they were the 15 millionth fan to see a game at the Ballpark. They flashed a stat saying in the 21 years the Rangers played in Arlington stadium, they had about 31 million all told, and we’ve gotten half of that in just under 6 seasons at TBIA. Less, actually, since the first year TBIA was around, the season was cut short (due to the MLB players strike).

Well, I got to see this one (see last night’s commentary) because it was on KXTX. :)
Jeff Zimmerman (am I the only one besides Jeff that thinks “The Zimmenator” is a stupid nickname?) tied a 73 year old record for consecutive wins by a reliever to start a career by going to 9-0. Unfortunately, his scoreless streak was broken at 29 2/3 innings. However, the way he’s pitching this year, it’s hardly noticeable (his ERA is now 0.88 after that run).
However, the story of this game was Pudge. He hit two home runs, driving in 4 of our 5 runs (Raffy had the other) with a solo shot and a three run home run. He also picked off a runner at third – his sixth pure pickoff of the season, the first at third. There’s no doubt that Pudge was the star of this game, it was quite cool to watch him play last night. Pudge also now has 20 home runs for three years in a row, tying a record for catchers. If Pudge gets one more steal between now and the end of the season (I think that’s a safe bet), he’ll be the first catcher in all of MLB history to have 20 steals and 20 home runs in a season. In fact, given there’s about 57 games left or something like that, I think there’s a good shot of Pudge getting to 30/30 providing he stays healthy.
Speaking of Pudge, I used to like Juan better than Pudge, but lately that opinion has changed a lot given the way Juan’s been behaving – I read an article about him verbally abusing Johnny and attacking a water cooler. I also saw the cooler last night (before I read about Juan’s battering of it) with the sign “Please don’t hit me, I’m a nice cooler”. It looked funny on the TV. :)
Burkett pitched OK – he’s definitely our fifth starter, but for him, it was a decent outing – I didn’t think he pitched bad at all, caught a few bad breaks, and was hit, but not lit up. I hope he can keep it going at least at this level for the rest of the season.
Attendance was pathetic for The Ballpark. Was only 24,720. I know it’s Monday, and it’s the Twins, but that seems really low for us!