Aw crap. We had another really great comeback in the bottom of the ninth for the second night in a row. That was a great feeling. The downside is we went into extra innings, which always seems to me to be a loss, we usually lose them in the 10th. If we survive the 10th, we have a shot, but again, the extra innings bug bit us, and we lost the game on a 12th inning home run by Geoff Jenkins.
So… CRAP!

Wow. I mean, wow. First off, nothing before the 9th inning mattered, except Brandon McCarthy pitched pretty well. Baby steps, I know.
Then the ninth. Francisco Cordero came in, got two outs, and then we were down to our last strike. Wilkerson got on. Then the fun began. We were down to our last strike in three or four straight batters, they all got on somehow. As Josh & Tom were pointing out, Cordero probably had a bunch of negative things in his mind in this park and all that – because he has been totally unhittable this season, being very Gagne in his prime like. Until tonight, Cordero had only given up one run all season, and had not blown a save. Well, tonight Cordero blew a save, and gave up FOUR runs for the Ranger win in the bottom of the ninth. It was quite amazing. I admittedly knew the score beforehand, but I had to watch that even though I knew how it ended. It was still pretty darn cool to watch.
And on the night where Teixeira went to the DL. Speaking of moves, I found it odd that today’s roster moves had two position players coming onto the 25 (Wilkerson, Metcalf) and the two roster subtractions were a fielder (Tex), and a pitcher (Loe). This tells me that another roster move is due in a day or so when we bring up who will take Loe’s spot on the roster.
We also acquired Adam Melhuse from Oakland for cash – that will probably work better than Chris Stewart as a backup, plus there’s big connection to Ron Washington too. I’ll just wrap it up with these two pictures:

After doing some yard work tonight (I hate mowing the lawn when it gets hot out in the summer), I decided to sit down and score the Brewers game. I had forgotten they were going to be in town when I bought tickets, so I’m not going this weekend. I couldn’t just pick up and go due to other commitments (family stuff tonight, a dinner at my church with our bishop tomorrow, and company coming over Sunday), so going was out. But I could score the game, as I did want to see the Brewers, so that’s what I did. Lately with them playing so badly, I’ve been less inclined to want to actually sit and watch a whole game from start to finish. I get bored, start skipping forward on the TiVo, generally I can watch a full game in about 45 minutes that way. But this time I watched all of it.
Early on, Robinson Tejeda was electric. He had struck out five in the first three innings, I believe, and other than a home run ball near the wedgie to Prince Fielder, he was cruising early. He looked like what I’m sure Philadelphia was seeing – a good young pitcher with great stuff.
The Rangers got some offense early. We picked up a two spot in the bottom of the second, when Capuano was incredibly wild, walking three in the inning, including one with the bases juiced. We would have had more had it not been for a cannon shot from Bill Hall to gun out Kenny Lofton at home. The fourth was our big offensive inning. Ian Kinsler led off with his first home run in a month, a shot off the top of the left field foul pole. After a couple of more singles sandwiched around a fielder’s choice that Kenny Lofton beat out to stay out of a DP, Mark Teixeira doubled down the line in right to score both Lofton & Young. Sosa followed up with another double, scoring Tex. A nice inning there by the guys who were supposed to be doing this same thing all season long. We picked up another next inning on a sac fly by Jerry Hairston.
Meanwhile Tejeda was cruising. Going into the seventh, his pitch count was low, he was winning 7-1 – it was everything our pitching was not. And then the reality set in. Tejeda’s wheels fell off hard in the seventh, giving up a 5 spot fueled by two home runs (Hart & Braun), and he was out. CJ Wilson came in and k’ed Prince Fielder to end that mess. OK, we’re still up, but it’s not the same game it was before.
We picked up a couple more runs in the bottom of the 8th to make our lead a little wider, but the back end of this game was Aki in the 8th, and Gagne in the 9th. Both Aki & Gagne were perfect, not allowing anything in either of their frames. Gagne started off with two K’s, making the batters look silly. I can just imagine what Los Angeles (the real LA team, not that fake one in our division) felt when he had like 10,000 saves in a row a few years back.
The annoying thing about this is that other than the 5 spot in the seventh, this was the way the Rangers of 2007 were supposed to be all the time. Good offense, Aki in the 8th, Gagne in the ninth. That’s what I mean by we won, despite ourselves. Minor concern that Teixeira came out of the game, hopefully that’s not anything. Course, if he is hurt and is out for awhile, that probably kills all trade talk about him.
Finally, this image is awarded to Victor Diaz who struck out four times (all swinging, too), earning the Golden Sombrero. Josh & Tom were saying that it was just a sombrero for four, and a golden sombrero for five, but that didn’t seem right to me. I looked it up a bit, and found out I was right. Four is the golden sombrero.

It’s a good thing I’m not Evan Grant. Why? He has to write about these bad games and teams. I can just say “They suck”, and be done with it. He has to be more erudite than that. Of course, he gets paid for this, I do not. I guess that’s compensation enough, eh Evan? :) I am just at a loss. The pitching is far worse than anyone could have ever imagined. I did think that after the last few years, I shoudln’t be THIS disappointed, but like most Ranger fans I was pretty high on the spring training team, Ron Washington, etc, etc, etc.. I’ll still be a fan, but MAN are they not good.
Loe gave up nine runs in 2.2 innings. That’s an ERA of what, about 6,000? Eric Gagne pitched an inning and didn’t give up anything. Given the usual demand for pitchers, he’s probably our best bargaining chip next month. Hopefully he holds it together health wise until after he’s traded. Mark Teixeira had a home run in the bottom of the ninth, when it didn’t matter. I’m still up in the air on what will happen with him. Last week I figured he was a total goner, and then that quote by Mike Young came out saying “If he goes… that’s not what I re-signed here for”, makes me wonder. I say if Arod opts out of his contract, you immediately give Tex what he wants, throw all that lost Arod money at Tex ontop of what you were going to offer him anyway.
Speaking of bad teams, let me take a moment to point out a very funny book about some very bad Texas Rangers teams of the early 70’s. The book is called “Seasons in Hell”, and was written by Mike Shropshire. Here’s some text about it. If you’ve never read this, I strongly suggest you do – it’s extremely good. Especially if you’re a Rangers fan:

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Assigned to cover the Texas Rangers for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in early 1973, gonzo sportswriter Mike Shropshire looked forward to the perks and padded expense account that went along with the job. He never dreamed he’d have to earn every penny–following arguably the worst team in baseball history. Full of wild games and wilder nights, and the exploits of some of the most extreme characters ever to play the game, this book is Shropshire’s irreverent, behind-the-scenes look at the hell a truly pitiful team can raise between games and innings.
Joe’s Remarks: I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this one either. I bought it because of the tagline on the front about it being funny. I admit to not knowing a whole lot about the very early years of the Rangers (I didn’t move here until 1992, and didn’t really follow ’em until 1995), and the thought about reading a book all about them didn’t thrill me.
However, I quickly found out that this was a hysterically funny book. Mike Shrophsire has a very funny wit, and isn’t afraid to let it fly when talking about the Rangers of this era. His recollection of events is awesome, and makes for very funny reading. If you’re a fan of the Rangers, or even if you’re not, GET THIS! It’s a very great read, although I don’t recommend it for very small kids, as there’s more than just one or two cuss words in there. Still, for adults, it’s well worth it.

You know, my TiVo recorded this game, and I was home when it started. I was more interested in playing a new release of Pac-Man on my Xbox 360. Played that for awhile. Worked on a problem on another website of mine. Helped put my daughter to bed. Then played some Uno on Xbox 360.
Decided I didn’t want to start watching the Rangers game from the beginning, so I just went to live TV on my TiVo, and saw the score after the top of the 6th. I turned the TV right back off, and immediately thought of this quote from Homer Simpson (reference). I think it about sums this one up.

Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I’ve seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

The Rangers suck. I don’t know any other way to put it now.

I don’t have time to write a ton here as I got too busy at work today.
But it was interesting being up 5-0 after the first five batters, and then 6-0 after the first seven batters. It was quite an interesting sight to see Detroit’s starting pitcher be pulled after six batters. That was a surprise.
I was also surprised at our ability to hang on like we did – we did add a seventh run late, but that was a long time “hang-on”, there. :)

I missed almost all of this game, because I was busy with church activities, and when I did sit down to watch the game, I promptly fell asleep on the sofa. Twice. So I missed most of this, but from what little I did see, it was… aw hell, we stunk up the joint again.
It looked OK early, but that was in the first couple of innings when it was 1-1. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, we were losing 6-4. It had the same kind of feel that Saturday’s game had. Got behind, caught right up, didn’t feel too bad. Only down two.
Then in the sixth, not only did the wheels fall off, but the wheels rolled off into the lake next to the road, an alligator ate them, and were never heard from ever again. We gave up another four runs in the bottom of the sixth, and while we picked up two more in the top of the eighth, it didn’t feel like we had anything in us.
EXCEPT for Victor Diaz. I almost titled this entry “The Mariners beat Victor Diaz on Sunday”, but decided not to. I did see Diaz’ three run home run (that’s right, fell asleep right after that), along the way to five RBI in all. Diaz is batting 297 now with 7 home runs and 16 RBI in limited duty. I wonder if he’ll get a longer look now, especially since Nelson Cruz seems to have gone into the hopper. While I don’t think anyone is clamoring for the return of Kevin Mench or Laynce Nix, I bet most people still think trading Coco was a mistake. Oh well, at least Carlos Lee is doing well in Houston – D’oh!
The best news about tomorrow’s day off is that we can’t lose the game. Not that it would matter – a quick glance at the standings as I write this shows we again have the worst record in major league baseball. We’re #30! We’re #30!
Since we’re leaving Seattle, I thought this might be a good time to show this video clip which Ranger TV fans should recognize. I think you may have seen it. :)

Through five and a half, this was a pretty good pitcher’s duel between Miguel Batista & Kameron Loe. OK, perhaps it’s not Steve Carlton vs Nolan Ryan good, but you couldn’t argue with a 2-0 score after five and a half innings. Things were going good in that regard.
Then the wheels fell off for Kameron Loe. As is the custom with the 2007 Rangers, the wheels normally fall off immediately, but this time it wasn’t until the sixth inning, when Loe gave up a 3 spot to go along with the two the Mariners already had. To be honest, I didn’t think he was as bad as his line looks, but as the old adage goes, “numbers don’t lie”. Oh well. Of course, eight hits and four walks in 5.2 IP isn’t that great either, so what the heck do I know?
Offensively, we got a pair of hits (single, double) from Ian Kinsler, and another pair of hits from Ramon Vazquez (singles). We had three more hits that were scattered (singles from Catalanotto & Byrd), one of which was a home run from Mark Teixeira, who has seriously helped his value in a trade, if we choose to go that route (which I really hope we do not).
The Rangers themselves matched the three spot the Mariners got in the bottom of the sixth with a three spot of their own in the seventh, so the game didn’t seem lost, it was 5-3 after 7.5 innings, so it felt like we were in striking distance.
In fact, we did pick up another run in the ninth. We lost (familiar), but showed some spark late (not familiar). Not sure what that means, though.

Late in the game, Josh Lewin made a reference to the image here, saying “we’ll be back with the kitchen sink, as this game has seem everything”. Well, about the only thing the game didn’t see was a fight. There was a lot in this game. I have to admit that TiVo has changed my baseball viewing habits an awful lot. It’s rare I sit there and watch the entire game, every pitch from front to back. I just get too impatient – especially if we’re losing, and start skipping forward. However, after writing the article on scoring a game yesterday, I decided to sit down and score this one, which means watch every pitch. That was helped by the fact that I used a break in the rain the last week to do some lawnmowing, and my body was a little sore from that.
This game had a lot of consistent scoring by the Rangers. We scored at least one run in six of the nine innings played. We worked a lot of counts full all night – the six Mariner pitchers threw just over 200 pitches between them, which works out to be about 22 per inning, which is a lot. And that leads to one of the most bizarre stats of the night. The Rangers tied the franchise record for most men left on base in a nine inning game, with 17. That’s 17 men on base in nine innings. I don’t recall how many times we left the bases loaded, but with 17, there had to have been a few. All of our starters except Matt Kata had at least one hit. Three of ’em (Laird, Young, Lofton) had two hits, and two of ’em (Diaz, Byrd) had three. Five of our 16 hits were doubles, and we had no triples or home runs, so it was mostly singles ball. Which is fine. Things were pretty much spread out too, no single player had a game that towered over another, although Marlon Byrd had a good night with three (very hardly hit) hits and an RBI. A lot of this was helped by the wildness of the Mariner pitchers. There was a stretch there where it didn’t seem like there was any strike zone at all – everything seemed to be called a ball for awhile. That wasn’t a function of a bad umpire, but pitchers who couldn’t locate – at all.
Defensively the best moment was the home run robbing catch by Kenny Lofton in the seventh that was the SportsCenter moment. Lofton stole a home run from over the wall against Adrian Beltre, and got the ball back to first (through Michael Young) to double off Keni Johjima. The look on Beltre’s face on TV was quite priceless. I’m also SERIOUSLY surprised there were no pictures of Lofton’s catch online. You’d think that would be something that would have been picked up, but I did not see any pictures of it. Darnit.
Scary moment when Mark Teixeira was walking off the field – he looked rather out of it to this very non medical person, and I knew it wasn’t looking good. You saw him getting attention from Jamie Reed in the dugout, and the big red welt on the side of his face looked bad – where he got hit in the side of the face by a ball sliding into home plate. Later on they said it was a “mild concussion”, and he hopefully doesn’t miss any time, but you never want to see something like that.
Our bullpen wasn’t too bad overall. Only Jack Benoit gave up any runs, and his was only one run. But in a back and forth game like this was, that can be a lot. Millwood gave up seven runs (only 4 earned) on 10 hits in five innings. That looks ugly, and those numbers are NOT good, but he seemed better than that. I know several of those runs would have not scored if for a couple of blunders (if not actual errors) by Ian Kinsler. Both plays lead to innings being continued, and then to further runs. One was a mental error on Kinsler when a ball that looked like a double play ball was hit to him and he calmly threw to first, obviously thinking there were two outs. That inning continued, and they scored a few more. As I sit here, I can’t recall the details of the other play, but I remember at the time thinking – “Oh boy, there’s another”.
Gagne got the save, which alone was an unusual thing to say this season. If there’s ever a guy who is primed to be out of town before Jul 31st, it’s him. A guy like that has no place on this bad of a team, so he’ll likely get traded to a contender. I wonder if the Dodgers would want him back? :)
Quite odd to get our 20th win of the season on June 1st. Wow.

Hands up those of you who thought it was over in the first inning.
Hands up those of you who really thought it was over after the third, being down 7-0.
Hands up those of you who wouldn’t mind seeing Jose Canseco pitch again instead of Vicente Padilla.
Hands up those of you who thought “OK, this wasn’t so bad” when we got the 5 spot in the fourth to come back 7-5.
Hands up those of you who were even still watching when we got the 5 spot.
Hands up those of you who turned off the TV when Catalanotto didn’t get the job done, leaving the bases loaded.
Hands up those of you think Sosa is gone right after he hits #600?
Hands up those of you who think we have any chance left this year? I’m waiting…
Hands up those of you who think that Paris Hilton’s impending jail term is more interesting right now than the 2007 Texas Rangers?