The feel good feeling of the first time through the rotation in the 2008 season is gone, replaced by a sinking feeling when you see how sloppy we’re playing in the field, and how inept we are with runners in scoring position. The play from the other day when Byrd led off with a triple, and was stranded there is still particularly annoying.
Last night’s game had yet another error for the pile for the 2008 Rangers. Where the heck is all this coming from? We were a much better fielding team than this the last few years. Our general core of players is the same, so why are we fielding like the Bad News Bears? No, I don’t want to hear it from Randy Galloway, either. Yeah, platitudes like “it will come around” are heard about now, but I don’t want to hear that EITHER. I want them to be fielding like they should be – RIGHT NOW.
I think Jason Jennings thought he was wearing an Astros uniform last night, as he certainly pitched like the 2007 vintage. BAD! 4.2 innings, seven hits, four walks, seven runs (six earned). With performances like that no wonder our attendance last night was 16,541. When the game started, I noticed the TV coverage is not showing a lot of shots of the park anymore. I wonder if that’s intentional – because the one shot we saw of the upper deck taken from a camera on Green’s Hill showed an almost empty upper deck five minutes before the start of the game. It was quite embarrassing.
Positives were Hank Blalock’s home run – that looked really good. Milton Bradley has definitely changed my mind about his signing – he’s doing very well getting on base. Our bullpen was pretty good – 4.1 innings of shutout ball.
But Good Lord man, we’re playing like crap at the moment. I’m already at the point where I’m skipping large sections of the game via TiVo, because it’s painful to sit through all the pitches watching the team.
NOT a good feeling to have on April 15th.

Our inability to hit with men in scoring position really made me mad yesterday.
We could have tied the game in the bottom of the 10th. Marlon Byrd led off the inning with a triple. A friggin TRIPLE no less. He was stranded there, and we lost.
Got too mad at this one to want to write about it.

There’s two things that pretty much will guarantee that you’re not going to win a game. The first is when a Cy Young caliber pitcher is on the mound against you, pitching like he’s Cy Young. Most teams don’t have a chance. The other is your own shoddy defense. If you put the two of them together, forget it. You don’t have a chance.
Roy Halladay, when he’s on, is a pitcher that will keep anyone down. He’s an extremely great pitcher, and one shudders to think what he would be like record wise had he been on a team that was better than the Jays have been the last half a dozen years or so. That’s the kind of the guy that was wearing the Toronto uniform with the number 32 on the back. Halladay threw a complete game against the Rangers. As has been talked about a lot of places, that’s a dying thing, but Halladay has led the league in that stat the last few years, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Through eight he was almost totally untouchable, allowing just four hits and a big fat donut in the runs column. In the ninth, the Rangers finally broke through with a Hamilton single, and then a Byrd double for our only run, but even that feels like it didn’t happen.
Luis Mendoza was activated from the DL and pitched pretty decently. If you look at his earned line, it was five innings, eight hits, one run, and three walks. OK, eight hits & three walks might not be great, but in the “where it counts” department, he gave up just one unearned run. Unfortunately, he gave up four runs in all, and that’s where the defense came in. Making yet another error (do we lead the league in that? Seems that way), Hank Blalock’s fielding error paved the way for three unearned runs in the fourth, pretty much handing the game to Toronto what with the way Halladay was pitching. Mendoza took the loss, but helped out the starting staff’s ERA, as his ERA is now 1.80.
There’s very little to write about offensively by the Rangers. We had just six hits in all. Other than the run in the ninth, the best thing is probably Marlon Byrd, who went 2-4 and getting the lone RBI of the game. Byrd’s been horrendous offensively so far this season, and his 2-4 raised his batting average to .130. Hopefully he’s broken out of the slump, and can get going. Can never have enough runs.
Anyone else concerned at how BAD Catalanotto has been offensively since returning to the Rangers for this go around? I always liked Cat, but good Lord – two years in a row when his batting average is so far down there that the Mendoza Line looks like something worthy of hall of fame induction by comparison.

Vicente Padilla went six innings, but it wasn’t just enough that he went six. He gave up a bunch. But not right away. He was pretty darned good through the first inning, then had a Chan Ho Park moment, and just totally lost it, giving up a four spot in the sixth. It wasn’t pretty. He then had another scoreless frame in the fifth, but gave up a fifth run in the sixth inning before exiting the game.
But what bugs me most is the three errors the Rangers had. One by Frank Catalanotto and two by Gerald Laird. This is way too many. If my count is right, we have more errors (12) than games played at this point (10). That’s just pathetic. Our guys are better than that. We seem to be playing generally pretty good so far this season, but the errors are disturbing.
Kaz Fukumori continues to NOT be the pitcher he was in spring training. In spring his ERA was zero (or close to it), but his ERA in the regular season after tonight was a sparkling 32.40 (!). In his one third inning of work, he gave up four hits, three runs, plus a walk. Not good at all. He just didn’t look good – not even close. Ugh.
Dustin Nippert who had an ERA of about a billion after his first outing came in and did a good job, going 2 2/3 innings, and only giving up two hits with no runs. That helped, as we did make a late charge, but it wasn’t enough.
The Rangers had eight hits in all. Five singles and three extra base hits. One was a double (Ian Kinsler), and the other two were home runs. Hank Blalock had a solo shot in the first, but the other was by Josh Hamilton, who I believe everyone was just waiting to see his power. He delivered in the seventh inning with a titanic home run which not only went into the upper deck in home run porch, but.. It went out one of the walkways for the section, and presumably kept rolling for awhile. It was a seriously impressive home run. I’ve been out there, and I know what it looks like from way out there. In fact, here’s a picture from my seat selector showing you what the view is like from there. Keep in mine the actual landing spot of the ball would have been about 15-20 feet above my head in this picture.

On another note, Frank Catalanotto is getting off to another ice cold start, just like last year. He was decent enough towards the end of the season, but we need that output now. His average is a measly .105. That’s pretty darned awful. Of course, Marlon Byrd is batting .053. Bleargh. :(
Overall we’re not doing good, but I don’t like these games that just get away from us. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for Fukumori’s horrendous outing.
Oh well, there’s always Saturday night and game 2.

The Rangers get over .500 for the first time since 2006 with this win. Hey, every other blogger, newspaper, writer is saying that, so I might as well too.
Kason Gabbard continued the streak of pretty decent starting pitching we’ve been getting so far this season. Now he wasn’t lights out, but he wasn’t Chan Ho Park/Mark Clark bad, either. 5.2 innings pitched, 7 hits and two walks. Three runs. Fell just one out short of a technical quality start. Most of that came in the sixth anyway. After five innings, Gabbard was leading 4-1, it was a pretty nice to see him do pretty well. In fact, when he was pulled, I didn’t think he needed to; he didn’t look that awful.
Jason Wright followed, and blew the lead, giving the Orioles their fourth run, which at that point tied the game and giving Wright a blown save in his ledger. He didn’t pitch all that bad, either, but gave up his hits in the wrong place. In 2.1 innings, he only had two hits and one walk.
C.J. Wilson saved the game, which was cool because he saved game one of the doubleheader as well. 18 pitches; two saves in one day is quite a good thing.
Offensively, we got started by a solo home run by Michael Young in the first inning which barely cleared the right field wall. Milton Bradley also did pretty well with two doubles and a couple of RBI’s. Adam Melhuse also had two hits. The rest of our hits were all scattered singles.
In all, a nice win. Wasn’t terribly crisply pitched, but we had enough timely hitting to pull out the win in the bottom of the eighth inning.
I wish I could have been at the doubleheader.

Yeah, yeah, it’s just three games, but Kevin Millwood is pitching like the guy he was in his one year in Cleveland. THAT is the guy we thought we were getting. While Millwood hasn’t exactly been awful in his couple of years here so far, he hasn’t been the Cleveland Millwood. But in the first three starts of 2008, he has been better than Cleveland Millwood. Check out these numbers:
Mar 31: 6IP, 4H, 2R, 0ER, 3BB, 4K
Apr 05: 8IP, 12H, 2R, 2ER, 1BB, 5K (complete game)
Apr 10: 7IP, 3H, 1R, 1ER, 5BB, 2K
Other than a few too many walks, he’s been pretty darned good. His ERA after three games is a measly 1.29. The disappointing thing is that he’s only 1-2. He really should be 3-0, in my opinion. You have to be excited if this keeps up. The first game of the DH was particualrly good for Kevin. One run on just three hits. Two of the three hits Baltimore got were by Adam Jones, one of the guys Baltimore got from Seattle for Erik Bedard.
Baltimore’s starter Steve Trachsel wasn’t any slouch either. He went 6.1 innings, giving up five hits, three runs (two earned).
This was another well pitched game. Of the nine total hits combined with both teams, seven of the hits were singles; the other two were doubles. Not a lot of power, which tells me that the pitching was rather good. This is quite QUITE refreshing to see.
This gets us back to .500 again, as we’ve played win-loss-win-loss so far this season.
I didn’t write much about this game, but in looking at the box scores, it all comes back to “Well pitched game”. No point in saying how all the individual guys couldn’t hit the starters. On top of that, the game started at 4PM when I was heavy into some work, so I could barely even listen.

To nobody’s surprise, Wednesday night’s game was rained out. It will be made up as part of a doubleheader tomorrow, starting at 4:05PM. Weather permitting, of course. :)

I normally go to doubleheaders, but given this is happening on April 10th, and it’s one day from now, I can’t get the time off from work. I love doubleheaders.

The morning started off by reading a newspaper article in the Dallas Morning News about fans and how they feel about the Rangers. I was interviewed for this piece myself on Monday, and I ended up in there. Funny that the author quoted my remark about the Phillies losing 10,000 games as a franchise. :)

When I left Garland at around 9:30AM, it was pouring raining. I mean painfully raining. This was not good. I don’t like rainouts ever. I detest them on opening day. The weather forecast had rain on Tuesday & Wednesday, and into Thursday a bit, too. So I got to the ballpark, and ran into the first of the changes – the redone roads. I’m going to write a separate article on the external changes at the ballpark at some point in the next day or so, so I won’t get into it here, but it was confusing. I had to park way the heck out – in a place I have NEVER parked at in all the games I have ever gone to at the Ballpark in Arlington. That kind of bummed me out.

Fortunately though once I got past Dallas, the threat of rain seemed to go away, and I never saw any more the rest of the day (which was odd, as my wife said it poured REALLY hard several times back home in Garland).
I got into the park around 10:30 or so, and did my usual walk around the park. I watched some batting practice, and checked out new signage and things of that nature. I’m the only dork who comes to the park and spends as much time checking out signs and advertising as he does the batting practice. :) The usual things were there for opening day festivities. Some of them I really like that they’re always there – it just feels right. Then you sometimes get silly things happening. Like this:

One really bizarre thing I noticed. All the gift shop cash register computer systems were down. For the first time in ages, I never went to the big one in center field, but I checked out the small one behind home plate, as wel as the kiosks in the 200 level, and finally the one up top behind Section 325. Their registers were all down. Or the computers weren’t working right or something. That was major failure that you couldn’t buy merchandise on the Home opener. But even that kind of annoyance didn’t bother me. I was back and seeing this in person:

The time rolled around to the start of the pre-game festivities, which are always great. So I made it back to my seat (shown in a semi panoramic shot above). The only pre-game festivities I like better are the July 4th ones. Chuck Morgan always does a bang-up job with both of these, and 2008 was no different.

They carried out a giant flag, Rangers alumni were introduced (including Inky!), the Orioles players were introduced, then finally, the Rangers were introduced. What I found amusing is that of the coaching and staff that were announced on the field, the Japanese interpreter got the loudest applause and ovation. Coaches generally get polite applause (except for Rudy), but the Japanese interpreter seemed to get the loudest applause at that point. Made me chuckle. After the Rangers players were all introduced (I love that bit), the giant flag in center field was unfurled. This was a pretty darned huge flag. They were always big, but in the past they were smaller than this. This one was bloody’ gigantic!

Another tradition is the flying in of the bald eagle from center field, around the park, and onto his trainer’s hand on the pitching mound. I don’t know why I like seeing that, but it’s something else like Cotton Eyed Joe in the 7th inning stretch that is always there, and that’s comforting. Like we are “back”. :) Speaking of that, there’s the ubiquitous B1 bomber flyover.

And finally there was the first pitch ceremony. This year the pitch was thrown by Eric Nadel, who is celebrating his 30th year of broadcasting Rangers baseball. He was escorted to the mound (why? Do people get lost going there?) by Nolan Ryan, and the ball was caught by Jim Sundberg.

So finally, we get to the first pitch, and the actual baseball part of the day happens.

That’s where the fun ended, really. Local boy Jason Jennings took the hill for the Rangers, and almost immediately killed all the fun from the game. He walked the bases loaded in the first inning, but managed to escape damage in that frame. Sitting there in the stands watching him, it was obvious he wasn’t going to have any sort of control. I’ve seen games where pitchers come back after that and the light goes on. This wasn’t going to be the case today. Jennings went four innings in all, giving up seven hits and four walks, allowing four runs as well. It should have been a lot worse, IMO.

He was followed by Jamey Wright who was pretty good in his time on the hill. Went 1.1 innings, and did give up two runs, but both were unearned due to a fielding error by Ian Kinsler. That error was the subject that caused me to turn off the KRLD post game call in show, because we had another mental zero call in and call Ian Kinsler “the worst fielding shortstop in the history of the Texas Rangers”. Oh Good Lord, it’s dumbasses like that who make me want to throw my radio out the window. SHUT UP! Anyway, the error led to the two unearned runs, putting the Orioles up 6-0 at that point. Jamey Wright did manage to pick off a runner, after throwing over there about 4 times. If you get picked off after the pitcher throws over there multiple times, then you deserve to be out.

The Rangers almost got a run in the second when Milton Bradley broke for home from third on a wild pitch. Problem the pitch wasn’t that wild and Bradley was thrown out trying to score. It ended up looking like this:

Our offense was rather frustrating, to be honest, as we had the bases loaded at least once, had men on base in every inning that I can recall except the first and ninth. We finally managed to get one across in the seventh on an Ian Kinsler single. Singles were the order of the day. Except for Gerald Laird’s double, everything we hit was a single. This was also our first game of the season without a home run. I don’t know if we would have scored enough to overcome the eight we gave up, but we probably should have had more than one run. Speaking of home runs, I kept hoping that this guy would jack one. He didn’t.

Marlon Byrd continues his crapfest that passes for his at bats in 2008, now at something like 0-17 I think to start the season. Big fat donut.

We lost, obviously, and it just felt weak. The Rangers have been playing better than that the last week, this didn’t feel like the same team.

The place cleared out pretty well once the Rangers started falling behind, but I think they were all sitting out on the streets. It took me almost an HOUR to get to 360 and actually get onto the highway from the Ballpark. That was nuts.
Speaking of delays.. Did anyone else in the park notice that the much hated delay was back? And it wasn’t just back a little, it was back A LOT! This makes listening to the game live in the stadium useless, as there’s a 10-12 second delay. When that first started, it got reduced to two seconds, and then removed totally. But it’s back again at the start of 2008. I’m HOPING that was an oversight, and it’s not the new norm. That would be zero fun for those of us who listen to the game at the park.

I normally don’t get on 360 going home, but there was an Ice cream store I wanted to visit. My wife grew up in Pittsburgh, and if you’re from that area, you know Brusters. When they opened one in Arlington last year, my wife said that we had to go. However, Brusters is 47.2 miles from my house in Garland, and with gas prices now, that kind of killed an ice cream trip. Since I was mostly there already, I went. Folks, the ice cream is awesome! It’s a tad on the expensive side, but holy crap was it worth it. Great ice cream. This is on 6301 South Cooper Road in Arlington. (UPDATE Dec 2019: They’re not there anymore).

Finally, I picked up my daughter’s Junior Rangers package. My little girl will be three in a week or so, and I’ve had her as a Jr Ranger now for three years. :) She’s been too small for the stuff they give out until now, so today I came home from the Ballpark with “treats” for her. There was a backpack, a picture of Rangers Captain (which she LOVED holding and showing Mommy & Daddy), a baseball cap, and a couple of wristbands. There’s also a coupon book which has vouchers for free kids tickets and a free gift for the kids once a month. It’s usually something like a poster, or a ticket to Six Flags, but sometimes you get really cool stuff like a bobblehead or a baseball.

One hidden cool thing in the kids pack is that you get a free kid’s ticket for select games each month, but in addition to that, you can also buy adult tickets at the same time for $6 each. It’s kind of like a cheap mini plan, because you can buy the $6 adult seat, and get the free kids ticket, and you have two seats for $6. I suppose you could buy the pack without a kid, and just make the $15 back for the package pretty quickly doing that. :)

Anyway, my daughter loved the stuff from the Rangers, so unless it’s a poster (which she wouldn’t be into yet), and it’s like a hat or a ball or something, I’ll be giving the things to her this year. I have to say I absolutely loved my little girl tonight telling me “Thank you Daddy for the presents from Rangers Captain!”. We told her they came from Rangers Captain (as it is the Jr Rangers club, and they have Captain all over the advertising for it). Here’s my last picture in this report. My just about three year old wearing the cap and the wristbands (which she did NOT want to take off AT ALL) doing that “kid smile”.

I’m really tired, and I wanted to catch up with the weekend’s games before the home opener tomorrow.
So I’ll take the cheap way out on this one. It was all Gerald Laird. 4-5 with 3 runs scored, SIX RBI’s, and three runs scored.
A heck of a day for anyone.
We come back home at 3-3, which again is more than what most people thought we would be at this point, so that’s a good thing.

Kevin Millwood is finally pitching like the guy we signed him to a couple of years ago. He’s pitched 14 innings over his two starts and has an ERA of 1.29. Fantastic numbers. Unfortunately, his W-L record is 0-2. He really looked good out there, had some nasty curveballs I can’t recall seeing before – looked almost like Zito in his prime curveballs. This is a very good thing. Kevin did have too many hits (12) for the innings he pitched (8). He did a great job.
However, Jeff Weaver was much better. Seven innings, three hits, and zero runs. In fact the 1 the Rangers got was a solo shot by David Murphy.
There’s not much else to say about this one other than it was a good old fashioned pitcher’s duel. Don’t get many of them anymore. As such, I’m not writing about the offense in this one.
Was a nice one to see if you like pitching.