This game can be summed up with just a few short words. Crappy starting pitching. Mark Teixeira.
Neither starter could hold a lead – both teams scored in the first 5 half innings, and through the end of the fifth, only the bottom of the third and the top of the fourth went scoreless. Jon Garland went 4.1IP, and gave up 7 hits, 8 runs (5 earned), and 3 walks. Not a stellar performance. Coudln’t have been the lights, as it was all daytime. Joaquin Benoit didn’t fare much better. He was pulled after three innings, and during his time, he gave up 5ER on 9 hits in 3IP. Not good on either side.
However, pulling Benoit was a good move, as he was replaced by CJ Wilson, who seems to have figured it out the last few apperances, as he’s been outstanding. He was really great in this game, too. He went 5 innings, giving up just two hits and one run. He looked sharp, threw strikes – was everything you want in a pitcher. He even got his first major league win in the game, which was nice.
Mark Teixeira was the star of this one. He went 3 for his first 3 at bats. Two home runs, a double, and six RBI’s. Definitely lead our team in this one.
Funny thing is that after the fifth, we couldn’t score anymore. That continued into game, two as well!
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The kid vs. the Cy Young winner. That’s how I started the report on Sunday’s game. It’s close to being the same for Monday’s game, too. Juan Dominguez vs. Mark Buehrle was not something you expected a positive outing from, but that is definitely what we got. Here’s another comparison of pitching lines:
Dominguez: 8IP, 7H, 2ER, 2BB, 3K
Buehrle: 7IP, 9H, 4ER, 1BB, 4K (3 unearned runs, too)
These lines just feel “backwards”. But we’ve gotten good young starting pitching recently, and that’s good. I think the goal now should be to end the season at .500.
We got to Mark Buehrle early, scoring two in the first, another in the second, and then three more in the fourth. We capped the scoring with an additional run in the fifth. Buehrle didn’t seem sharp at all, and then came out in the press afterwards claiming the Rangers “cheat” at home. That seems like whining about losing to me. I’m not claiming any team is beyond cheating, but to claim the other team cheated right after you lost just strikes me as sour grapes. The White Sox didn’t help themselves either by comitting four errors in the field, and allowing three unearned runs. That’s probably where the difference in this game was.
Tex continues to be hot, going 3 for 4 with 2 RBI’s in this game. One of the RBI’s was his 100th, which makes him the fifth Ranger to have consecutive 100 RBI seasons. We had a couple more home runs this game, one was from Kevin Mench, and the other was one from Mark DeRosa which was most definitely wind assisted. DeRosa has done a nice job this past week. I’m not sure if he fits in for 2006, but for the remainder of this season anyway, he seems to be doing his job well.
Edison Volquez pitches today for the first time ever as a Ranger. I bet Jamey Newberg is more excited than he probably is letting on. :)
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The kid vs. the Cy Young winner. Who is supposed to come out on top in these? Yup, the Cy Young guy. Chris Young vs. Johan Santana was a match up that worried me. I figured as soon as we gave up a run or two, that’d be it. Santana would shut us down and that would be the end of the game. Yeah, I know if you’re reading this, you know how the game turns out, but look at these numbers: Which of these pitching lines is which?
Pitcher A: 7IP, 3H, 6K, 2BB, 0ER
Pitcher B: 7IP, 3H, 6K, 3BB, 1ER
They’re awfully close, the major difference is the earned run figure. The second one was Johan Santana and the first was Chris Young. In his last 3 or 4 starts, Chris Young seems to have rediscovered himself. Which is good, as he’s about to break the Rangers rookie record for wins, he needs just one more. The only run the Twins scored was against Erasmo Ramirez who was called up in favor of Justin Thompson yesterday. But Chris Young out dueling Johan Santana was something I think most Rangers fans were not expecting to happen, so it’s particularly nice to see.
We won the game on a walk off hit by Blalock, after Jesse Crain got himself in too much trouble. The Twins were playing double play depth instead of in, which probably cost them the game based on the ball hit. Nice win, nice series, even the loss felt good, despite it being 7-2. With the exception of the 11th inning on Saturday, I felt we dominated the Twins.
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There’s two things to talk about regarding this game. First, let’s talk about the game itself. Was a match up of veterans. Kenny Rogers vs. Brad Radke. Brad Radke went 6 innings, giving up 5 hits and just one run. Kenny Rogers went 6 innings, give up 6 hits and NO runs. We were up 1 to nothing going into the seventh, when John Wasdin gave up a run to tie the game. But we picked up a run in the bottom of the 8th to go up 2-1. Then Cordero comes on and blows the save by giving up a run in the ninth, tying it at 2. I generally dislike extra innings from the aspect of we tend to lose them. I like them because we get more baseball, though. :)
We should have won the game in the bottom of the 9th though. Gary Matthews led off the bottom of the 9th with a double. Sandy Alomar then tried bunting, and failed. Twice. He popped up a bunt foul, and then tried a second time and bunt popped up to the Twins’ first baseman. Ugh. Dellucci and Young couldn’t get the job done either, that was pretty much it. We didn’t do much of anything in the 10th and 11th either. But the Twins did. They pounded Brian Shouse & Steve Karsay for 5 runs in the top of the 11th capped off by Jacque Jones’ home run. We lost 7-2 on a game we SHOULD have won. :( To make matters worse, we had a stupid out in the bottom of the 11th as Phil Nevin did get on, but was doubled off first to end the game after a Sandy Alomar hit ball ALMOST went out in left, but Nevin had run all the way around to third by that point, and was doubled off first. What a way to end it.
The other thing to talk about was the heat. I was at this game, and this is the kind of weather that demands that we move our Summer games back to 7:30 at night. Why exactly are we playing all these day games in the summer? I remember a quote in the press a year ago by Buck Showalter about us supposedly trying to take care of our natural environment in that regard, but come on – this is nuts. I walked through the concourse, and it was surprisingly cool (it usually isn’t). But the seating bowl. Wow. That was damn hot. It was hovering around 100 all day and mostly brilliant sunshine. Way too damn hot. They announced the attendance as 25 thousand something. Yeah right. There was at most 10,000, and unless they were all the way in the few rows down the bottom, they were all up in the shade. I know I was. My regular season ticket was 328-5-1. No way, I was up in 328 Row 22 (three from top). The folks who sit across the aisle from me in my regular season tickets were there too. Got a good idea from the lady that sits there. She had a cooler full of ice, and towels. Throw some ice cubes in the towel, and use it to cool yourself during the game. That worked surprisingly well. I figured it would be a “OK, that’s nice, but I’m still hot”, but the ice and the shade kept me pretty cool. But I shouldn’t have to do that, we shouldn’t be playing in heat this bad.
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Wow. This one was all about the pitching, which is something that is nice to see for next year, but would have liked to have seen more of it when it counted when we were still in the race. Kameron Loe got a start. According to the press, he’d been asking for a start opportunity. He’d been operating out of the pen his entire time in the majors. Generally when you ask for things, you had better deliver. Boy did he deliver. He went only five innings, but that was fine, given he hadn’t been stretched out. The five he went was great. Only five hits, no walks, and five strikeouts; but NO RUNS given up. And then CJ Wilson came on, which wasn’t a good sign given how much he’d been lit up this year. But he matched Loe, going 4 innings, gave up no walks, only ONE hit, and no runs. Wow. What a performance by both. Probably felt better for Wilson more so than Loe.
Offensively, we had three home runs, Mark DeRosa went 3 for 4, bla, bla, bla. This game was about pitching, and wow did we get some. The only downside is that it was against the Twins, who probably could be out hit by Rangers Captain at the moment, but a 6 hit shutout is something I’ll take any day.
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This was another of those games I had to listen to at work, which means that I didn’t get a good listen. Nice to see some good pitching from Benoit, though. Too bad it was wasted.
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Due to parental duties, I only got to watch till the sixth inning (and due to work duties I can’t write a bunch either). But what I saw was pretty great. Juan Dominguez looked sharp. He went six innings, giving up just one run on two hits. His walks were high though (five), but he k’ed 3. Overall a pretty good performance.
Ryan Franklin did not have a great performance (5IP, 10H, 6ER), but then we always seem to do well against him. Nice home run by Kevin Mench.
The video of Jim Knox dancing with a large dog was very disturbing.
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I had tickets to this game, but I couldn’t go – still haven’t fully recovered from being sick, and I don’t think a 100 plus degree day would be good for me, or for my 4 month old daughter, either. Stayed home and watched.
Chris Young continued his late season pickup and threw another good game, if a short one. He only went five innings, but gave up just a solo home run to Ichiro (no shame there) on the second pitch of the game. After that he settled down and allowed just three more hits over the rest of his time, and struck out six. Ichiro also did him in in the fifth too with an at bat that was about 15 or 16 pitches. Probably cost Chris coming back out for the sixth inning, as he topped out at 100 pitches thrown. Still, if you take away the 15 from Ichiro, that makes 85 which is still about 10 too many for the fifth inning. Our bullpen gave up 3 more runs, but we had enough tonight to hang on.
Mench homered in the fourth, Phil Nevin doubled in two guys in the 6th, and Tex had a solo home run in the 7th. The two home run balls were definitely wind assisted, as they both landed in the first row right over the fence. Neither looked like a home run ball off the bat.
I was kind of surprised that Jim Knox didn’t turn up in right field to give a ball to the guy in the green shirt. If you watched the telecast, you know what I mean. They did however, talk to the loudmouth they showed around Section 226, though.
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Nope, wasn’t any better than the rest of the games on the road trip. We got swept for the third time this series, going 1-12 on the entire trip. In fact, for the entire month of August, we’re 4-15. Way to go, guys. Not much else needs to be said, really.
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August 20, 2005 was my 40th birthday. And I spent it sick. Wasn’t a fun day, spent most of it horizontal or at the porcelain altar. The Rangers didn’t fare much better, getting shut down AGAIN for the 11th time in the 12 games of the road trip.
Scott Kazmir, who is a guy I’d love to have (as I’m sure the Mets would too ), shut down the Rangers going six innings, giving up just one run, four hits, and striking out ten. He looked pretty damn awesome. The two runs we got were in the traditional Rangers way, solo home runs (Matthews in 6th, Soriano in 9th). Outside of that, we had just four hits the rest of the game, pretty much were dominated. The game didn’t feel as close as the 4-2 score indicates.
On our pitching side, Benoit seems to indicate he isn’t cut out for starting. He went 5 innings, giving up 4 runs on six hits with 2 walks. Not godawful, but not great, either. Brocail, Shouse, & Loe kept the Rays off the board for the rest of the game, but it didn’t do much good.
Sunday’s game is the last one of the road trip. Probably won’t be any better.
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