This game was good and bad for Dave Burba. Good that he pitched pretty well, great that he had some batting going on with a home run and a single that he stretched into a double – but bad in that he appeared to pull a hamstring running out the double. He came out of the game shortly after that, and it was announced as being a “minor” hamstring – no one seemed too concerned, but whenever you hear the word “hamstring”, it’s never good, IMHO.
On the other side, it was all Rangers. The two runs Burba allowed early on were all that was allowed. We sent quite a few pitchers to the hill including Rocker (who appeared to be very good), and none of them allowed anything.
For our offense we had two home runs, including the aforementioned home run by pitcher Dave Burba, as well as another by Juan Gonzalez. The other runs we got came mostly in big clumps, with 3 in the second, and 5 in the 4th. Nice to see a big win after losing quite a few, and three in a row. We now need to string together a few heading into the regular season.
Next Friday – baseball returns to the Ballpark! I’ll be there Saturday afternoon; if anyone else is going, drop me an email, we might be able to say hi! :)

Kenny Rogers has probably been our most dominating pitcher this pre-season. Yesterday was not his best outing. He didn’t pitch particularly bad, but he wasn’t exactly crisp either. He gave up 4 runs in five innings off of 10 hits.
On the flip side, we had a few home runs which were good to hear. Carl Everett & ARod both homered (on consecutive pitches) in the first – and Juan followed with one of his own in the third. That was it for our offense, though. Four runs on three home runs. The Pirates pitching was a bit better than ours – their starter (Josh Fogg) also gave up four runs the same as Rogers, but their pen gave up nothing for the final 4 innings. We gave up one – Colby Lewis pitched the final 4 innings himself.
After our big stretch of winning games in a row, we now have a pretty big stretch of not winning much at all. :(

No commentary due to me being sick – don’t remember much about this game 2 days later. :)

No commentary due to me being sick – don’t remember much about this game 3 days later. :)

Got to listen to most of this game over the Internet via mlb.com while I was at work, as they carried the Rays radio coverage. Was pretty funny to hear Eric Nadel there, as he was a “guest” on the Rays coverage, he talked mostly about Hank Blalock. I suspect Blalock will start at third, unless he completely falls apart the next two weeks. Question is, do we keep Mike Lamb? If we could trade Lamb and the guy we just got yesterday for Justin Duchscherer for a decent middle of the rotation guy (someone from Baltimore? They need a young third baseman), it could work. Anyway, back to this game..
Dave Burba sounded decent here. He wasn’t dominating (although it took less than 10 pitches his last inning of work), but he did have a good line. 6IP, 1ER, and only two hits. A good performance there. Rocker gave up a home run, and didn’t look all that good, but Powell & Miceli weren’t bad either. Overall, a good pitching day.
Was really nice to see us win in the bottom of the 9th with a HR by Gabe Kapler. I really hope we can find a way to make our outfield situation work, as I don’t want to lose Kapler. Speaking of that, Carl Everett played DH today in a major league game and went 1 for 4. I suspect he’ll be ready, but will be treated gingerly at the start. Can’t wait for the start of the season – less than two weeks now!

Ugh. Four in a row. They can’t make up their minds, can they? 6 straight wins, then 4 straight losses. No fun.
Didn’t get to listen to the game, plus work combined for no commentary from me today.

This game started off great – the first batter (Ranger Jason Romano led off the game with a home run), the rest was pretty much blah. The opening home run was our only offense of the game, and our pitching again was “eh”.
Hidecki Irabu once again just pitched “OK”. Didn’t exactly suck, but didn’t set the world on fire, either. A pretty boring game for a Ranger fan, actually. :)

I was busy doing house stuff this afternoon, and totally forgot this game was on until there was about 5 minutes left. Oh well, didn’t miss much – we lost for the second day in a row.
In looking at the scores, it was a tight game, but mostly because of Arod’s grand slam. Todd Van Poppel’s line was the worst of the pitchers we used. Rocker looked pretty unimpressive too, but I’m not worried – yet. We did have another HR, one by Herb Perry.
Found it interesting that Rob Bell was sent down today. I know he’s not lighting the world on fire, but I find it surprising that this happened – figure if he was to be sent down, it would be late in camp.

This game can be summed up by just pointing the finger at two players. Vincente Padilla & Hank Blalock. Padilla because he pitched quite well for the Phillies, and Blalock for providing our offense with a two run hr in the 5th (yeah, we scored one in the 9th, but it was really over by then).
I follow the Phils too, and I was aware of Padilla (he came over in the Curt Schilling trade), but he certainly sounded good on the radio. As I have the MLB Extra Innings package on DirecTV this year, I’ll probably get to see a few Phillies games. Anyway, he shut us down except for a monster home run by Blalock.
In listening to the game, I don’t recall us doing anything really bad to deserve 8 runs scored against us. However, I was driving around at the time and went in and out of several stores, so I did miss a few minutes here and there. Anyway, after the big run of the last week, I suppose a loss here and there isn’t too bad for the soul, eh? :)

The wins keep coming. We’re now 12-3, we’ve won 6 in a row (actually, there’s a tie game in the middle of that), and we’re rolling along well in spring training. Seems the only questions are:
Who will be our starters past Park / Rogers / Davis – and who will open the season at third? Lamb is OK, but his defense is still suspect. I suspect it will still be Lamb, but whether he lasts the year is another question.
This game was long ball. It was being covered by MLB.com’s MLB radio folks – although they cut out in the middle of the game to cover the Cubs / Giants game – Grrr… They read an email of mine on the air, too! If you were listening, I was the one who asked about Arod’s salary). Longballs from Greer, Raffy, & Kevin Mench accounted for 4 of the 6 runs we got, and Rusty had a great day with a single, double, and a home run. Dave Burba pitched well, as did Rudy Seanez. Jeremi Gonzalez did not, but he’s a kid, so I’m not gonna harp too much on that.
Can’t wait for opening day – now only a couple of weeks away! :)