There wasn’t really a whole lot to this game. Mike Morgan, outside of the second inning pitched very well, and the two Ranger relivers that followed (Venafro/Crabtree) each pitched one scoreless inning. Mike Morgan made one big mistake in the second, a three run home run to Kurt Abbott. Other than that, he was great. In fact, the Rockies went down 1-2-3 in every inning from the fourth to the ninth with only two hits in that mix. The three run home run did it.
The Rangers weren’t a whole lot better, except we didn’t go down 1-2-3 as many times. The Rockies did it in 7 of the 9 innings, we did it in only 3. Our lone scoring was the two solo home runs by Juan Gonzalez & Rafael Palmeiro in the 4th. We had a few chances (1st and 3rd with 2 outs in the first, 1st and 3rd with 1 out in the 9th), but we didn’t mount any real offense.
In fact, the offense for both sides was rather scattered, as there were a total of 15 hits for both teams, and 14 of them were by different players (only Echevarria for Colorado had two). We had our chances, and we didn’t come through. Oh well.
On to a hellacious 8 game stretch with four games in New York, and four in Boston. Ugh. Hope we come out of that still in first, and still in decent shape.
Ruben Mateo went 0-4 with a walk – he has one hit in his first two games, a home run. Mateo did try and make a good catch during the game, but missed it – he looked good, and he did change his uniform number from 38 to 21 – no reason given on TV that I heard for the switch.
Commentary by Jim Weeks:
Mike Morgan had his most effective outing of the year, but one bad pitch was belted for a 3 run homer and the Rangers lost.
This is one game the Rangers should have won. They had numerous opportunities to win the game, including in the 9th inning, but it wasn’t to be.
Ruben Mateo, sporting Ruben Sierra (and Roberto Clemente’s) #21, made a bad judgement play in center, diving for a ball he should have played differently. Although he walked in the game, he did strike out twice.
Juan Gonzalez drove in his 1,000th career run with a solo homer.

My wife and I were out for the evening seeing a movie (Austin Powers II), so we didn’t hear/see much of the game at all. We did hear part of a pre-game interview with Jeff Zimmerman where he talked a bit about his brother with the Mariners, and what it’s been like being part of the bullpen this year. Zim did say one thing that I totally agreed with him on. He does not like the nickname “The Zimmenator” that the TV guys have given him.
When the movie was over, and we got in the car, I turned on the radio, and started listening. The score was I believe 8-4 at the time, and while we were driving, I heard Mateo’s name. At that point, I hadn’t found out about the roster move – the short time we listened to the pre-game in the car, they didn’t mention it. Mateo hit his first dinger of his career (didn’t see it, only in replays), and he almost hit two, but seemed to have a good game for his first. There was a miscommunication late in the game with Juan on a fly ball that they almost appaered to run into each other over. Still, good first outing.
So, they had put Goodwin on the DL, and brought up Ruben Mateo. If you read my commentary from yesterday, this is what I didn’t want to have happen, as I figured it would piss off Simms & Kelly (there was an article in today’s Dallas Morning News about that same issue). Anyway, now that he’s here, I would like him to stay, but I have a feeling that we’ll be losing either Simms or Kelly in the process. That’s a shame, we have done good with these guys, but if we could only keep one, I’d rather keep Kelly.
Oh well. Aaron Sele seemed to be pitching well, but caught a really bad break in the bottom of the 4th, and the Rockies scored four runs because of it. :( Not the greatest outing for him, but not the worst – our bullpen picked up the slack pretty good.
I’d write more, but I only saw the last two innings on TV, and listened to one on the radio – by this point, all the big stuff had happened already. :)
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
Not available.

Royce Clayton doesn’t hit many home runs, but when he does, he does it off someone good. Last night it was Darryl Kile giving up a homer to Royce in the 6th, tying the game; Royce’s second of the year. His other home run was last week in Arizona off Randy Johnson. Royce is playing and hitting better lately, but I get the feeling he’s still not all there.
All three Ranger runs were courtesy of the longball. The other one was Rafael Palmeiro in the bottom of the eighth inning, with a two run blast to win the game. He’s definitely Mr. Clutch this season, that’s for sure.
In a disturbing trend in the last month, Rick Helling pitched excellent, but didn’t get any runs, and was removed, and the bullpen swiped his run for him (again Zimmerman, who is now 7-0 in relief). It’s great that he’s pitching well, but our offense needs to wake up a bit earlier during Helling’s games. Helling is lowering his ERA, he’s down to 4.5. That’s still not that great, but considering how much up in the stratosphere it was after April, it’s great to see it somewhere near reality.
In the game, Tom Goodwin injured himself running from first to third, and had to come out of the game. It looked fairly bad when he was being helped off the field, and Roberto Kelly came in for him. With Mike Simms ready to come off the DL, I wonder what will happen. The Rangers said that Ruben Mateo will be in Arlington today, so that brings up an interesting scenario. If Goodwin goes on the DL, do they give the job to Kelly and activate Simms for backup? Do they call up Mateo, give him the job, leave Kelly as the backup (possibly pissing him off in the last year of his contract with us), and leave Simms on the DL (probably pissing him off, too)? Do we bring up Mateo, give the job to Kelly, and have Mateo as a backup? Do we activate Simms, give Kelly the job, with Simms as backup, and leave Mateo in AAA? It’s an intersting scenario. As I write this (1:45PM on Saturday the 12th), the decision still hasn’t been made (or I can’t find it on the net). I’m really curious to see what happens here.
Personally, I’d like to give it to Kelly and activate Simms, leaving Mateo in AAA. That is if the injury to Goodwin requires a trip to the DL, and it isn’t too long term. If it *IS* a long term thing, bring up Mateo give him the job, keep Kelly as a backup, and still activate Simms, and send one of the bullpen guys down to AAA. I think we’re out of options on Simms, and we have to expose him to the wire. I don’t really want to lose him.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
Rafael Palmeiro’s 2 run homer in the 8th inning led the Rangers to a 3-2 comeback victory over the Rockies Friday.
Palmeiro just keeps coming through with the big hit – he has 4 of the last 5 game-winning RBI’s for the Rangers – all of them late in the ball game.
Jeff Zimmerman, now an amazing 7-0 with an ERA of 1.13 and John Wetteland shut down the Rockies in the last 2 innings.
These two have been outstanding as now the Rangers’ bullpen is 15-1 with 31 saves.
Rick Helling pitched well for 7 innings but Texas had a hard time scoring off of Darryl Kile.
Kile might wind up in a Rangers’ uniform before the trade deadline. This is a pitcher the Rangers wanted a couple of years ago but he chose Rockies’ money instead. The Rockies would want a couple of Minor League pitchers for him and probably Cesar King as well.
Tom Goodwin injured his hip during the game running the bases. There’s no word yet as I write this how serious an injury it is but this may well open the door for Ruben Mateo, by far the highest rated offensive prospect in baseball, who’s having a monster year at AAA.

Not available.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
I didn’t get to see but about half the game Wednesday. I saw enough though – as Mark Clark was shelled and the Rangers lost for only the 3rd time in 15 games.
The Rangers played some good defense in the early innings, but Tod Zeile (again) let a ball go right through him and then there was no way for the Rangers to come back after being down 6-0. Zeile was not charged with an error (that may change because it was obviously an error, according to the radio guys), Zeile is going to wind up killing this team defensively and I really expect him to be dealt – or benched – in favor of someone else down the stretch.
The good news is that the Rangers finished the road trip at 3-3 against pitchers they never have seen or rarely see.
Friday, they open up a short three game homerstand against the Rockies, then back into troubled waters against the Yankees (4 games) and Boston (4 games) on the road, before almost a three-week stretch against AL West opponents.

Let’s see, lots of strange stuff in this game.. 13 innings, a balk, a streaker in the field, Juan Gonzalez ejected for arguing balls and strikers, a Ranger reliever being tied for the team lead in wins with 6, a Wetteland blown save, and 6 different players batting in the 7 runs we scored (Raffy was the only person with two).
Quite a bizarre game. Took four and a half hours, and we finally pulled it out. I thought we were dead in the bottom of the ninth, but we got away with a double play that, to my eyes on TV, lookd like something we shouldn’t have gotten. There was a strike-em-out throw-em-out double play, but it appeared the Royce Clayton pushed the Dodger runner off second and then tagged him out. We got the call, which is good, because right after that, John Wetteland gave up a solo home run to tie the game. Call hadn’t gotten our way, we would have lost there (there’s a picture of this below in the photos section). A couple other interesting things was that Goodwin had three stolen bases, Mike Munoz got his first save as a Ranger, and the Rangers left fourteen men on base!
Mike Morgan came off the disabled list (pushing Kolb back to AAA), and pitched well in the first two innings, throwing a total of 18 pitches for the two innings. Total of 8 for for first four outs of the game. However, that was about it. He didn’t survive the fourth. For a change, our relief pitching wasn’t godlike. Was enough to keep us in the game, though, and was by all accounts still good.
A thought occurred to me last night, if Morgan is still with us next year, it’s entirely possible that he will be a teammate that wasn’t born yet when Morgan made his first major league appearance in 1978. This morning, I looked through the Media Guide, and saw that this isn’t true, but it’s fairly close. Unless some really young kid comes up next year, the most realistic to Morgan would be Ruben Mateo, who was born on Feb 10, 1978 (Morgan’s first appearance was June 11, 1978). Ruben Mateo was only 1 day short of four months old when Mike Morgan first appeared. Yikes!
There’s also Cesar King, who was born on Feb 28, 1978, but I doubt he’ll get to the majors with Texas, he’s too good to be a backup. Carlos Pena is actually younger (May 17, 1978), but I doubt he’ll be up next year, and I don’t see Morgan being with us beyond 2000 (if he even gets there).
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
I had trouble getting the KRLD version of the game on RealAudio last night so I spent most of the game listening to the Dodgers’ XTRA team of Vince Skully and Ross Porter. It was actually quite nice as both announcers – especially Skully – had nice things to say about all the Rangers. Skully is as good as it gets behind the mike and his knowledge of the game is nothing short of astounding.
It was the same story as has been the last few days for Texas. Rafael Palmeiro was once again the hero as he drove in a run with two outs in the 13th inning to give Texas a win.
On the pitching side – and it sounds like a broken record – Jeff Zimmerman pitched 2 scoreless innings to pick up his 6th win with no losses. John Wetteland however blew a save (just his second blown save of the year) in the 9th when light-hitter EY (Eric Young) hit a solo homer.
I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the extremely valuable pitching effort of Danny Patterson, who provided 3+ innings of scoreless relief after starter Mike Morgan faltered in the middle innings.
Patterson, who most think will be sent down when Mike Simms is ready, may have changed a few minds with his last two efforts, both being long, effective outings.