Kason Gabbard took the hill in this game, and looked pretty decent. He got in a bit of hot water in the third, but got his way out of it. Not so much in the fourth when he gave up the first run of the game on a hit to Donnie Murphy. Gabbard gave up a single to Piazza and then a home run to Mark Ellis in the sixth after setting down the previous four in a row, and 7 out of 8 before the Piazza single.
The bottom of the sixth was a big one for the Rangers. It started off with a Cruz walk, and then a rather interesting play on a screaming liner by Jason Botts. It forced Cruz to dive back to first, that was an odd looking play, we almost ended up with two runners at first. Then Cruz was doubled in by Saltamacchia. Gerald Laird then doubled in two runs, knocking out Chad Gaudin (who I dropped from about four fantasy teams I had him on before the game). After the pitching change, Ramon Vazquez bunted Laird over to third, which seemed a bit of an odd move in the middle of a big inning. Frank Catalanotto then doubled in Laird. Then a real puzzler, the A’s intentionally walked Michael Young to get to Marlon Byrd. It ended up working, as Byrd grounded out to third, ending the inning, but it worked – we scored four runs.
Kason Gabbard came out of the game in the top of the seventh after a pretty decent line. Six innings, three earned runs (technically a quality start), five hits, three walks (too many), and four strikeouts. Way too many pitches, though – 107. Still, six innings is doable.
Wes Littleton came on, and was completely ineffective, allowing all three runners to get on base, leaving for Frank Francisco with the bases loaded. But Francisco navigated his way out of that mess, and did not allow anyone to score. I know how that feels, the Rangers have done that. Nice to have it happen for us, as opposed to against us. Francisco just mowed ’em down in the seventh. Cust flied out, Piazza struck out, and Mark Ellis grounded into a fielder’s choice. Into the eighth, Dan Johnson lined out, and Marco Scutaro flied out. Those five outs in a row came on just 12 pitches. Donnie Murphy’s at bat end that with a double, followed by an RBI single by Curt Suzuki, followed by a home run by Shannon Stewart making it 7-6, a close game again. Frustrating outing by Francisco, as he was totally dominant his first five batters, and then totally not the next few after that.
The Rangers did add one in the bottom of the 8th, and had a chance to bust it wide open, but just settled for the one.
That was it for the A’s, though. CJ Wilson came in and pitched the rest of the game, not giving up any runs, and getting the save. Kason Gabbard got his first win as a Ranger, and his first in Texas.
Random comment: Jason Botts just looks gigantic at the plate. :)

I have to say, once we fell behind 6-0 in the first inning, I lost my desire to watch the game. I’ve had enough of that kind of crap inning as a Rangers fan, and the prospect of sitting through another game hoping and praying we’ll catch up was not one I was looking forward to. It got worse once we got to the third, and went down 7-0. By this point, I was flipping channels, and started watching Baseball Tonight, and also watched more of the Nationals Giants game than the Rangers game. That kid the Nats ran out there (John Lannan) looked pretty good on the hill against Barry Bonds (and the rest of the Giants).
Anyway, the Rangers did pick up a three spot in the bottom of the third to make the game a little more palatable. Two scored on a Sosa Texas leaguer to left, and the other on a Marlon Byrd single.
As bad as the first inning was for Rheinecker, I have to give him some credit for battling, and staying out there for five innings. Really, other than the grand slam in the first, he wasn’t THAT awful. Now there’s no good way to say giving up six runs in an inning is a good thing, but innings 2-5 were pretty decent. Shine’s off the shoe a bit regarding that honeymoon feeling when he was called up, though.
In the bottom of the eighth, we got the bats going again and got closer. We scored three. The first two were on a Jason Botts home run (which I’m sure had every Newberg fan and Jamey himself probably too excited for their own good), and a groundout by Kinsler, scoring Salty.
The bottom of the ninth was led off by Michael Young’s first home run in three months (to tie it and go to extra innings), and then two innings later, Michael Young led off the inning by getting his first ejection of the season, followed quickly by the first ejection of Ron Washington too. Ron looked pretty darned mad. I know managers can get mad, but Ron seems like one of those “nice guys”. Nice guys can get seriously mad when they do get mad. Makes me wish I could lip read, there was a really good closeup of the argument on TV.
Mike Wood (4IP), Joaquin Benoit (1IP), & CJ Wilson (2IP) were all great out of the pen, keeping the A’s off the scoreboard. Then in the 13th, came in Willie Eyre. I had that feeling of doom. I’m not a real big fan of Eyre, and my feeling was upheld. Eyre gave up two runs in the top of the 13th that lost us the game. Shame, as it was a great feeling coming back from down 7-0 so early.
A few amusing things… Regarding Marlon Byrd, when did this thing start I saw on TV where everyone was “doing the Bird”? I don’t have a problem with it, it’s rather cool, but I can’t recall seeing it before tonight. Also, I saw on TV that Saltamacchia had his own “Hank’s Homies”. Forget right now what they were called, but it was “Salty’s Shakers” I think. That’s nice to see so quickly.
Bonds is still at 755. I’ll probably be flipping between channels again tonight to see if he hits 756. I know it’ll be all over SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, and every sports show and website from here until the end of time, but there’s something about “seeing it live when it happens”, that makes me want to flip channels. :)

I’m not going to say much about this game. I’ve been sick, and haven’t felt like writing, I just wanted a marker page. :)

I wonder if Alex Rodriguez’s 500th or Barry Bonds’ 755th got our boys to forget about this mess any easier.
This was another game my TiVo blew it on (I need to check my settings), and when I turned it on about one hour after the game started, I figured they’d be into the fourth. They were just starting the second. And we were already losing 6-1. Oh well, time to head back to the Xbox for some more “The Bigs”.
The Rangers site’s story on this game has the headline “Eyre can’t stop bleeding for Rangers in loss”. They’re right. From what I see from the recap, it was a mess. Look at this:
– R. Johnson singled to shortstop
– L. Overbay walked, R. Johnson to second
– A. Rios doubled to left, R. Johnson scored, L. Overbay to third
– V. Wells doubled to deep left, L. Overbay scored, A. Rios to third
– F. Thomas homered to deep left center, V. Wells and A. Rios scored
– T. Glaus walked
– A. Hill flied out to center
– G. Zaun singled to deep center, T. Glaus to third
– J. McDonald sacrificed to pitcher, T. Glaus scored, G. Zaun to second
– R. Johnson struck out swinging
All in the first inning. Bleargh. Eyre’s overall line was just atrocious. 2.1 innings, six hits, seven earned runs, two walks, two strikeouts, and two home runs. And they said they pitched him because they thought he’d do better than Mike Wood, who didn’t arrive until really late at night and was tired with short rest. I can’t imagine it being a whole lot worse. Actually, I can, but I tell myself that so it’s not as bad. AJ Murray gave up the other two runs in his 2.1 innings of work. Littleton & Francisco followed, and did stop the bleeding, but it was done.
Offensively we weren’t too bad, with eleven hits (one double, one triple, one home run, eight singles). But with two home runs by Frank Thomas, and the early lead, this one was over immediately, really.

I missed most of this game due to family events. Building a block building with my little girl seemed more important than watching the Rangers game tonight. But still, I’m a Ranger fan, so I had to say something about the game after checking out the box score.
The Rangers scored early, putting three on the board in the first two innings. This was powered by a Nelson Cruz triple (scoring Cat), and an Ian Kinsler single (scoring Vazquez & Laird). Unfortunately, this was offset by another pedestrian opening by Kevin Millwood, who allowed three runs to the Blue Jays in the first inning (single, walk, single, double). Kevin’s overall line wasn’t too awful – those were the only runs he gave up. However, too few innings (four), too many hits (eight), and WAY WAY WAY too many pitches (96) combined to kick Kevin out after the fourth. We only used one other pitcher this evening (Jamey Wright), who also went four innings, and gave up three runs to Toronto in the sixth.
Jamey’s appearance in relief will keep him from starting on Saturday. Instead, we’re calling up Mike Wood from AAA to start in place of Kameron Loe who is going on the DL with some back pain (although it doesn’t seem serious from reading about it). Nothing terribly bad here, but I have a “meh” feeling about it.
Offensively, we had one triple (Byrd), and eight singles scattered around the game. Halladay went 6, giving up four earned runs. Not exactly Cy Young caliber stuff, but it was enough to beat us this Friday evening.

Jake Westbrook got his second win of the season. On August 2nd. Against us. Figures. It was his 13th start of the season, and only his second win. He pitched like he was Roy Oswalt, which he is most definitely not. That’s usually when pitchers do things like that. Westbrook was pretty much in control, going six innings, giving up 5 hits and one walk and five strikeouts. No runs, obviously. Pitch count was a bit high, 103, but it didn’t matter. Cleveland’s relievers went 3 innings, two hits, no runs. We were shut out.

The Rangers had seven hits in all (including two doubles (Young, Botts)), and that’s usually enough to push across a run or two, but we couldn’t do that. Was pretty much an ineffective offense today.

Kason Gabbard made his Rangers debut today, and wasn’t that bad. He went 5.2 innings, gave up 3 earned runs on eight hits and one walk. Struck out four. It was cool to hear that outside the strikeouts, his outs were all on the ground except one fly ball. Shortly before Gabbard came out, Eric Nadel uttered the phrase “Jason Gabbard has been a ground ball machine today.” That will be good in Arlington. Makes you wonder what we’ll do when Vicente Pidente comes off the DL. Almost makes you wish we hadn’t have signed him, eh? Still, Gabbard was pretty good, if not great today, so it’s something good to build on, I would think.

And finally, I wanted to have a mini rant about the KRLD post game call in show. The first 3-4 callers to Mike Ogulnick are prime reasons why I don’t like listening to call in shows. The guys who said “we’ve been in a rebuilding mode since 72” & “we’re the AAA team for the rest of MLB” are exactly what I mean by short sighted, knee-jerk “fans”. When you say silly things like that, it completely discounts everything else you say, and make someone who really knows baseball want to shut off the radio (which I did). I ranted about this the other day about the Teixeira trade, and I won’t go into a full rant here, but dammit – where’s Steve Busby when you need him? Ogulnick wants to be everyone’s friend. Come on man, call some of these people morons like Busby used to!

First off, my TiVo did not record the game tonight. That was a bit of a bummer. I had spent the early evening playing some more of “The Bigs” on my Xbox 360, and then was going to check out the game, as I wanted to see Saltamacchia, and catch a glimpse of Gabbard, but to no avail. I did get to see Salt’s RBI hit on Baseball Tonight as I was flipping back and forth between that and coverage of the Minnesota bridge collapse.
I did see that we won 9-6 in extra innings, which is a surprise, as we usually seem to lose 10 inning games. I did get to hear the first inning on the radio at work while I was waiting for my ride home to show up, she was delayed due to the big storms in the area then. Really felt like we were going to get out to an enormous lead in the first inning. Paul Byrd was all over the place, and allowed 4 of the first 5 batters on, which scored a run. Jarrod Saltamacchia came through in his first at bat as a Ranger, he singled in two runs in the first, making it 3-0 early.
However, John Rheinecker gave it all back and then some with a four spot in the bottom of the second behind a single, a double, and two home runs. Cleveland though decided to help out by gifting us a tie again in the top of the third on a Garko error.
Things stayed calm for a little while until the bottom of the fifth when Rheinecker was knocked out following a Garko single/RBI and a Travis Hafner double/RBI. That made Rhein’s line 4.1 innings, 8 hits, 6 runs, 2 walks. Ugh. That was the bad Rheinecker. You know, I don’t have any good reason to do it, but I wanted to say “Rhein’s line” again. I amused myself typing that. :)
Our bullpen was outstanding again. Five relievers (Eyre, Littleton, Murray, Benoit, Wilson) combined to go 5.2 innings of shutout ball. Combined they allowed just three hits, NO WALKS, and seven strikeouts. Would have liked to have seen that – darn TiVo.
Frank Catalanotto (now one of the elder statesmen on this team) doubled in a couple of runs in the top of the 8th again, tying the game up, and sending it to extra innings where I don’t like being – we always seem to lose. Especially if it’s JUST ten innings. Give me 14 or 17 or something, then we win, but 10 is bad.
In the 10th, it seemed like Cleveland was a mess from looking at the play by play log. Vazquez single, Cat fielder’s choice (no out), Kinsler reaches on throwing error (Vazquez scores), Young intentionally walked, Botts hit a sac fly (Cat scored), Byrd singled (Kinsler scored), Cruz struck out. It was enough.
But the bits that most Ranger fans wanted to know about…
Nelson Cruz: 2-5, 1 run scored
Jarrod Saltamacchia: 1-5, 2 RBI
Jason Botts: 0-5, 1 RBI (sac fly), 3K
Sammy Sosa: 9 innings bench time
Kason Gabbard: Pitches tomorrow
Was weird seeing Teixeira hit a home run in Atlanta on Baseball Tonight. The Atlanta fans were having a love fest, but I bet you anything they’ll be wanting to run him out of town come October 2008.

After the disaster that was the last game in Kansas City, one wonders how many Ranger fans were more looking forward to the trade news of the day than the team actually playing a game and losing. Especially against Cleveland starter Fausto Carmona. Mr. Carmona has been lights out this year, going 13-5 (after this game), and just generally being an awesome young starting pitcher.
McCarthy has been unstable at best, and I don’t think 2007 Rangers fans know what they’re getting each time he goes out there. So it was some surprise to most I’d wager that Brandon pitched as well as he did. His overall line was 6.2 innings pitched, four hits, three walks, and one earned run. The earned run was a solo home run to Ryan Garko in the seventh. Josh Lewin had just made a point that McCarthy hadn’t pitched this far in a game this season so far. Don’t blame him, but McCarthy seemed to be running out of gas in the seventh, and couldn’t seal the deal. Frank Francisco came in and put out that small fire. Heck, CJ Wilson, who got the save tonight was also lights out. 1.2 IP, 0H, 0R, 0BB, 2K. A great night for Rangers pitchers. McCarthy even got into things in the fourth on a wild pitch that he was able to get back to the plate on and tag out the runner trying to score – which at that point preserved his shutout.
Carmona didn’t do too bad himself. He went 7 innings, giving up five hits and one walk. He allowed three runs (two earned on a call that should have been a hit all the way). He probably would have gotten the win most nights with that line, but tonight he was beat by Brandon McCarthy.
Nice to see Saltalamacchia turn up in the dugout during the game. The bit about him and Hank Blalock and their kids’ names tattoos was fun to watch. Salt is probably playing tomorrow’s game. That’ll be worth looking out for.
Bottom line, an extremely well pitched game, on a day when we took inbound several good pitching prospects via trade. Makes you wonder just what the heck in the world we were doing in Kansas City?!?

The less said about this mess, the better.

Kevin Millwood had an awful game on the mound. His line was atrocious. He went 2.2 innings, giving up nine hits and one walk. All six runs the Royals got were off Millwood, and they were all earned. No good way to describe that.
Of course it did mean that our bullpen pitched pretty well. All six KC runs were scored in the first three innings. After that, our bullpen put up zeroes.
Offensively, it was all Nelson Cruz, making his first appearance since returning from AAA after the trade of Kenny Lofton. Cruz was the show, hitting two home runs, and driving in all five runs the Rangers scored. Was nice to see that. Hopefully the new batting stance we saw on TV during this game helps him out. I did like him a lot when we first aquired him about a year ago. But he definitely has fallen since then. Hope he puts it back together again.
But a tough loss. We did make some noise in the ninth inning, scoring two to get to 6-5, and I believe left the bases loaded when the game ended. Darn.