A pitchers duel! This game rocked! I loved it, even though we lost. Helling made only one bad pitch all night, and it burned him. A 3 run home run to CJ in the late innings. However, Helling was masterful otherwise. Our normally huge offense didn’t cover the mistake, but we were up against another pitcher (Sidney Ponson) that really shut us down too, we were lucky to get the two we got.
Helling pitched the first complete game by a Ranger all season – unfortunately it was a complete game loss. :( There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this game other than Raffy remained red hot. Pitching was the story here, and there was little offense to speak of.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
Great pitching will win most ballgames. Saturday, there was an exception to the rule.
Rick Helling pitched a complete game, seven-hitter. 99 times out of 100, Helling is going to win those type games. Friday is was one-uppped by O’s pitcher Sidney Ponson, who threw a complete game, six-hitter.
It was hard for either team to generate any offense. Raffy Palmeiro, perhaps the hottest hitter in baseball right now, homered against his former mates and for a while, the Rangers led 1-0.
Then Charles Johnson, who is red-hot himself as of late, blasted a 3-run homer off of Helling in the 7th inning. That was the ballgame.
This was the first game in the Major Leagues this year, where both pitchers pitched a complete game.

I had forgotten this game was on at work, and I turned it on right before the back-to-back-to-back home runs. Unfortunately, that’s about all I got to hear, as I was fairly busy with work. But I did get to hear that! :)
Our first day game win of the year.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
In what was most assuredly the most exciting Rangers’ game of the year to date, the Rangers took turns bombing ex-mate Bobby Witt and beat the Rays 7-6.
The Rangers belted 4 homers off Witt, including 3 in a row in the 5th inning, by Pudge, Palmeiro and Zeile. This ties a record the club set last year against the White Sox. It also tied a team record for most HR in an inning.
So while the offense clicked, Mark Clark again was – by normal standards – ineffective – but to Rangers’ standards, effective enough.
The key to the game however goes to the superb pitching of one Jeff Zimmerman, easily the Most Valuable Player so far this year for the Rangers – and perhaps the MVP so far in the league. He’s done nothing but record outs – important outs. Wednesday, his 2.1 innings began when Venafro allowed the tying run (6-6 at that point in the 6th) to score on an infield single/bad throw. Zimmerman came in, struck out Canseco and then proceeded to attack the Rays like an overgrown field in July – he simply mowed them down.
The Rangers hang on ever so tightly to first place as Oakland remains a heartbeat away.

Well, I was at this game, and I didn’t feel like anything really bad was happening. We went down 2-0 in the first inning, but other than a Canseco home run (like anyone could stop that right now), I didn’t feel like Morgan pitched bad at all.
We just couldn’t score. We left something like 14 runners on base all told, and it was really obvious at the game we weren’t connecting. Your offense can’t win every game, but you should get the runs when you get the chance. We didn’t last night. However, the double play killed us last night – we hit into five of them. Pudge hit into two himself! Ugh.
On another note, Zimmerman continues to impress. Last night, when he struck out Canseco in the ninth, I haven’t seen such a reaction. Not only to the strikeout, but Canseco took a really huge swing and missed for the first strike – he almost fell over. Man, did that get an ovation at the park!
Found out after the game that Burkett had been sent to the bullpen, and Mr. Cinderella story, Ryan Glynn had been given his spot in the rotation and will start next Tuesday in Tampa Bay.
Also, Mark McLemore left the game after the fourth with a sore knee. I really hope that’s not the same problem that’s plagued him the last few years. He’s had a kickass season, and I don’t want to see it ruined. I was starting to have hope that Mac might turn it around and get resigned – I like him.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
Starting pitching has been the Rangers #1 enemy this year. They may have found out their #2 enemy in the game last night.
The Rangers grounded into a team-high 5 twin-killings Tuesday, including the ultimate deadly one in the bottom of the ninth, as the Rangers lost their third game in a row, 5-4 against the now-you-better-take-them-seriously Devil Rays.
Even though the Rangers had 14 hits and 4 bases on balls, they plated just 4 players. Texas leads the majors in grounding into double plays and last night was the first game of the year where you can point directly at the GIDP for this one.
Raffy Palmeiro went 4-5 with all 4 RBI and is now hitting .370. Rusty Greer had a hit and walked 3 times, driving up his OBA.
Mike Morgan, who pitched better than the numbers might indicate, was the games’ losing pitcher.

Ugh. After the second inning, I started watching the Stars game as well as the Pittsburgh Penguins game. I’m going tonight to game two – they had better not have a fiasco like this three nights in a row.
I feel bad for Burkett. I like him. I always have. It appears that unless lightning strikes, he’s done after this year.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
Let’s cut to the meat of the matter. This game can easily be summed up by this part of the boxscore:

Pitcher        ip h r  er bb so hr era(game) era(year)
Burkett (L,0-3) 4 8 12 12 5  2  3  27.00     13.24

John Burkett set a new Ranger record for most earned runs in a game, erasing Bobby Witt’s previous record of 11.
Rusty Greer popped a 2-run homer in the first and that’s about all Texas could muster. Rusty now has 36 RBI’s and he might be having his best season ever.

Found out at the start of the game that Esteban Loaiza was put on the 15 day DL, with no expected return date, as he had his hand smashed in a car door by his wife, and showed up at the ballpark at noon with his hand in some sort of cast or bandage. That was the first the Rangers found out about it, and had to make a quick roster move, sending Loaiza to the DL, and calling up Ryan Glynn. About the game itself…
Oh man, how do you talk about this one? It was a disaster from the getgo. It’s a game where we gave up four home runs to Albert Belle & Charles Johnson, Aaron Sele pitched 99 pitches in 2.2 innings, jacked the team ERA back up pretty bad again… Jim’s remarks below blamed Loaiza for not reporting his accident. Today’s DMN has a quote from Johnny saying that he doesn’t blame Loaiza directly, not reporting this kind of thing is rampant in the majors, he said about 90% of players don’t report this kind of thing. This was our chance to sweep the Orioles for the first time in a four game series since our first year as the Rangers in July of 1972. It didn’t happen, obviously.
Good stuff:

• Kelly Dransfeldt hit his first major league home run today. It was a real corker, too. Way out into left field. Felt good for him. TV coverage showed the ushers escorting the person who caught the ball out, presumably to swap it for some presents.
• Ryan Glynn, making his first major league apparance today struck out Cal Ripken for his first out. Presumably they took that ball out of the game, too.
• Jon Shave doubled in a run in the bottom of the eighth.
• Tom Goodwin tripled in the bottom of the ninth, scoring Dransfeldt.

I suppose the interesting thing was the apperance of Ryan Glynn in the ninth inning. At the start of the game, he wasn’t even in the state of Texas. Monday Morning’s Dallas Morning news had a great article on how Glynn got the call, and made it to the game in time to pitch in the ninth. Some might question the call to get him in now, but in a game like this, it wouldn’t HURT to put the kid out there, even if he got knocked around (which he did a little).
Games like this suck, but hell, at least the 16 runs were all at once. Whether the Orioles scored 6 or 16, it was enough to beat us, although it won’t help our ERA. Not that it much matters, I think assuming we win, it’ll still be with a stratospheric ERA anyway. Too bad, I had hopes for our pitching coming into this season.
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
The Rangers’ hopeful sweep of the Orioles was swept away rather omniously Sunday afternoon. The Orioles pounded out 24 hits (yes, 24) in a 16-5 bombing of the Rangers.
You could place the blame of this loss on several players but let’s start with Aaron Sele.
Sele was woeful; in 2.2 innings he threw 99 pitches – or more than 12 pitches for each out he recorded. And that was the good news. The bad news is he gave up 11 hits, 4 bases on balls and 9 earned runs.
Sele was the Rangers’ best starting pitcher in April.
You could also put part of the blame on Esteban Loaiza – who didn’t even get into the game. Loaiza broke his hand after the game Saturday evening in a freak accident. However, he failed to inform anyone of the incident until a couple hours before game time. Therefore, the Rangers were without a long reliever until the 8th inning when Ryan Glynn (AAA) made it to the ballpark. Oates probably would have pulled Sele in the the 1st inning instead of in the 3rd.
Not that it would have made much a difference.
Offensively, the Rangers had 11 hits, including a 3-run 2nd inning, but did little else and certainly they didn’t have enough to beat the O’s on Sunday.
The Oakland A’s are just a 1/2 a game behind the Rangers. If Oakland can pick up another starting pitcher, the Rangers are in trouble.

I was kind of not really paying attention to this one. Earlier in the day, I had attended my first baseball card convention in about 20 years, and I had purchased several things (including three complete sets of cards), so I had a ton of new toys to play with. Boy, did I ever feel like I was 12 again playing with baseball cards while baseball was on!
Anyway, the story of this game was Rick Helling. After the first three starts of the season for Rick, he appears to have bounced back to 1998’s form. Which is good, as the Rangers need this. BADLY!! He went a full eight innings, and Oates said after the game that he would have let Rick go 9, but this was uncharted territory for any Ranger pitcher this year, and that if he had done this before during this season, he would have let Rick go for a complete game. Rick looked really good out there, not completely dominating, but still very good.
Actually, it looked like a pitcher’s duel was brewing, as we didn’t do much off of Orioles started Juan Guzman, either. However, he had to leave the game after the fourth inning and shortly after that, the current Ranger offense (aka Rafael Palmiero) took over. He cracked a three run home run into Home Run porch for the game-winning hit. We then picked up four more in the seventh to end the day’s scoring.
Crabby came in for the ninth and pitched a scoreless inning in something odd this season for the Rangers – a really well pitched game!
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
No commentary for Saturday’s game. I hurt my back and had to go to bed early, I didn’t hear any of the game. Sorry.

I’m not writing commentary about this game – I didn’t get to see/hear very much of it. However, it was a nail biter, and I don’t have very many fingernails left to bite! :)
Commentary by Jim Meeks:
The Rangers managed to hang on for a win Friday night.
John Wetteland, who has been ineffective, despite his saves, gave up 2 runs in the 9th but the Orioles just couldn’t squeeze out another run and Texas won 7-6.
I’m getting sick of this pitching staff. Mark Clark pitched Friday and again, he was ineffective. 4 earned runs in 6+ innings? Get out of town.
The Rangers need to find some starting pitching. Offense cannot carry you but perhaps half the time.
Last night it was the middle of the order carrying the Rangers. Rusty Greer, who suddenly has a home run stroke, Pudge (hitting cleanup) and Raffy Palmeiro each has 2 RBI each (with Greer and Pudge hitting back-to-back homers in the 5th).
You have got to love this offense but you have also got to hate this pitching staff.