I was so busy with work today, I didn’t even realize the game was on. By the time I did realize it, it was 4:30, and the game was already over. From the looks of things I missed some heartbreak.
Oh well, I think I’ll skip writing about this one.

There’s not much positive to say about this game.
1) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
2) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
Yes I realize that’s the same thing twice, but I thought they stunk so bad, it was worth pointing it out twice.
Actually, the big positive was Chris Davis. Having recently been granted the first baseman’s job by Ron Washington, he paid that back with a great night. Chris went 3-4 with a home run. Milton Bradley was also 2-4, but that’s about it for the positive in this game (does Blalock’s triple count?)

Scott Feldman has probably been our second most consistent starting pitcher this season, behind I’d say Vicente Padilla. So what do you do with a guy like that in the second half? Put him in the bullpen. There was some talk during the All Star break that Feldman would be going to the pen in the second half. The stated reason is one that’s hard to argue with, I suppose. He’s apparently either at, or about to pass his largest number of innings pitched in his career, I think they’re trying to protect him. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but don’t pitchers get stretched out in that regard by being pitched, and not protected? I guess it’s only a mild complaint, but when you get performances like we got this game, you don’t want him in the pen.
Scott Feldman tossed six innings, and allowed just one run on four hits. Had three walks, which isn’t great, but there were three double plays turned behind Scott. The pen was quite good too. Three guys followed Scott (Francisco, Guardado, Wright), and between them there was just one hit allowed (Guardado). Great pitching performance. It’s too bad they can’t be consistent for a great length of time – look at our last dozen or so scores, they’re not consistently showing this great pitching game after game.
Offensively, it’s a tale of home runs. Five of our six home runs were accounted for by the longball. Classic Texas Rangers offense. There was a three run shot by Josh Hamilton in the third inning, and there was a two run shot by Hank Blalock in the eighth, his first home run in bloody ages. Given we had six runs, we didn’t have a ton of hits (just eight). Half of them were doubles, though, so we had four doubles, two home runs, and two singles.
Was a nice win, and nice to see Blalock get back on the HR chart. Probably should savor those, as I can’t imagine he’ll be a Ranger come 2009.

That headline is really unfair to Vicente Padilla, Eddie Guardado, & CJ Wilson, but I think most people will remember Taylor Teagarden most in this game.

Heck, Taylor got his first caught stealing throw in the majors. He got his first major league hit, which also happened to be a home run. Said home run was also the lone run in this game, and broke up a perfect game bid at the time by Minnesota starter Scott Baker. How cool was all that? It was quite a moment, and he didn’t visibly smile enough for my tastes. :)

Baker certainly personified the concept of “hard luck loss” in this one – no doubt.

This looked like the Vicente Padilla we’ve been seeing all season – going after guys, and not nibbling. His last two outings before this one were the ones where he was presumably hurt, and it’s nice to see him bounce back to his old 2008 self when coming off the DL. Hopefully he stays that way.

Despite the win, I’m a bit surprised at how underwhelming our offense was in this series in Minnesota. For all three games COMBINED we had a total of just three runs (one was zero, too) and eleven hits. Blech. It’s like we went to sleep. That was a horrendous performance. If it wasn’t for our pitching on Sunday, we would have been swept out of Minnesota, and quite frankly, the way we were hitting, we probably deserved that.

Having said all of that, it was quite nice to see Taylor Teagarden have such a cool day. Makes you wonder if that’s it for him for awhile, given our catcher heavy situation right now.

Ugh. The only good moment of this game was Chris Davis’ home run.
I know it’s only two games out of the break, but after last night and tonight combined, does anyone else feel like it’s April again?

First off, I wanted to make a comment about the MLB Game Recap for this game. For the last few seasons, I’ve been linking to the recaps on the official mlb site. This year they’ve gotten a lot better, with video and pictures, and recaps from both sides. They’ve been a serious improvement. There’s technically three recaps for each game. The ones that are slanted for the home and visiting team comprise two, and then there’s a third that covers the “general MLB recap”, which also includes the other two. Anyway, for the general MLB one, someone is writing what I would perceive as “comedic headlines”, where it’s things like “Texas Two Step stops such and such team”. But the one for this game really struck me as odd, mostly because it seems bizarre. The phrase was “Perky pitching powers three-hit derby”. Perky? Perky? What exactly is “perky pitching”? That really seems odd to me.
Thing is, this little diatribe I wrote about the word “perky” is more than what can really be said about the actual game. I think most Rangers fans were riding high off of Josh Hamilton’s HR Derby performance. Ian Kinsler’s 25 game hitting streak was ready to be extended, and most Rangers fans I think were feeling good about the team. Unfortunately, we ran into Twins pitcher Glen Perkins. He tossed a gem against the Rangers, going six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits. Those hits were a double (Byrd), and two singles (Young, Bradley). Perkins only went six innings and 98 pitches, though. I thought he probably could have gone longer, but you can’t argue that he would have done better than the bullpen guys who followed. The three Twins relievers each pitched a single perfect inning. You can’t beat that.
Millwood was not good. 6.1 innings, eleven hits, one walk for five earned runs. Bleh.
But the bottom line was the Twins pitching shut us down totally, and handed us our first shutout of the season. Hats off to Perkins and crew for a well pitched game.

The Rangers had four guys in this game, and they all played. Granted, two of them started, and one of the other two should have started, so that came as no surprise. What was a bit of a surprise was the fact that for roughly an inning or so, all four of them were in the game at the same time – if not all on the field at the same time, as Bradley was a DH. Here’s a short summary of what our guys did:

• Josh Hamilton – 1-3 with a steal. His hit was a single. He got a lot of applause because of his home run derby moves. Wasn’t terribly impactful in the game.
• Milton Bradley – 0-2 with a walk and a steal. He was also picked off. The walk was a surprise. OK, not really. He’s been doing that all season.
• Ian Kinsler – 1-5 with a steal and a caught stealing. He also had a great tag on a not terribly well pitched strike out, throw ’em out throw from Dioner Navarro. Was well played.
• Michael Young – 2-5 with what could have been the game winning single in the 11th, but Dioner Navarro was thrown out at the plate. That was made up for by the bottom of the 15th.

I’m not going to get into the individual stuff about the whole game, but the first four innings and innings 9-14 were both scoreless, but for different reasons. The first four were well pitched. The others were well danced. Both teams really gave the othe team a ton of chances, but nobody could get the job done.
Defense was weird. There were some fantastic plays at the plate on both sides (Adrian Gonzalez pick and Miguel Tejada falling down throw plays to save the game comes to mind as well as Ichiro’s throw to get Albert Pujols). Then there was Dan Uggla, who had three errors on his own, although the third wasn’t really his fault.
Young’s hit and lost game winning RBI in the 12th was nowhere near as bad as the bottom of the 11th where the AL had the bases loaded and nobody out, and couldn’t score. In the bottom of the 10th/11th, three of the six outs were at home plate. The National League had the bases loaded in the top of the 12th, and couldn’t push one across, either. AL led off the bottom of the 12th with a double, couldn’t do anything with it. There were a ton of chances in extra innings, but nobody could seal the deal until Young came up again in the bottom of the 15th with the bases loaded and sac flied in Justin Morneau.
Four hours and fifty minutes later, Michael Young gets the game winner for the second time in the last three All-Star Games. Gotta love that.
I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed in the pre-game stuff. Oh, there was nothing wrong with it, and I really did like seeing all the Hall of Famers, but there were quite a few of them that probably should have been there like Johnny Bench & Nolan Ryan. I did like how they staged it so Yogi Berra was the last announced Hall of Famer. Some other things I wished would have happened is have Joe Torre be on the NL coaching staff for some reason. Likewise having Don Zimmer on the AL staff.

No commentary; no time.

I was involved in a church event last night, and will be most of today too, so I have no time to write about last night’s game. Nice try in the bottom of the ninth though. Love the resiliency (sp?).

After his last start, Luis Mendoza looked pretty bad. This was a complete turnaround. Mendoza looked like the guy he did at the end of last season. Great sinker, really good command. His last game was just bad, this one was just good. His overall line was 6 innings pitched, three hits, one walk, just one earned run, and EIGHT strikeouts. He was quite good. Kept Chicago off the board for the most part. It was quite a night and day vs his last start.

Our entire staff was pretty good. The White Sox only had five hits in all. Three of them were extra base hits, which accounted for the runs. Carlos Quentin had a double off of Mendoza for one of the RBI’s. The other one was a solo home run by Jim Thome off of Josh Rupe. No shame there, Thome is a big time home run hitter. I’ll take the performance of our staff. Combined, we went nine innings, just five hits and two earned runs with eleven strikeouts. Warner Madrigal was the only one who didn’t have a great outing. He only went two thirds of an inning, walking three. However, he was bailed out by a play at the plate.

For the second straight game, Brandon Boggs threw out a runner at home. Plays at home plate are in vogue this past week with the Rangers, and you almost kind of hope it happens now, don’t you? :)

Offensively, we were all over Gavin Floyd, the White Sox starter. He only went 2.2 innings, giving up five hits and SEVEN walks. Two home runs, for a grand total of six earned runs. We had two home runs this game. One, a solo shot by Chris Davis in the second inning, and a two run shot by David Murphy in the third. We didn’t have a ton of hits (just nine in all), but we were seriously helped by the walk. With the Sox pitching giving up eight of them, including one with the bases loaded, that helps a lot.

Josh Hamilton had three hits, and Michael Young had two. Ian Kinsler also had a hit, extending his hitting streak to 22 I think it is. Strange hit, though he hit the ball deep into the hole at short, and at the time we had a runner on second. The shortstop was really going away from first, so he threw to third. Our runner was safe, and they called that a hit. It probably would have been had the shortstop threw to first, hence the call. But it was an odd hit.

Speaking of odd, I have to go back to the Chris Davis home run. Usually when a home run ball is hit out onto Greene’s Hill, there’s a pile of (mostly) kids going after it. Well, this one only really had one guy running after it. He was out there way early, and there wasn’t a trail of people after him. There was one guy sort of in the area, but that was it. The guy caught it in his glove. Josh & Tom talked about it. What was amusing is that this guy was a web gem on Baseball Tonight too. I wonder if this guy knows that? :)