First off, this game outlasted me. When it went to extra innings, I turned it off. I was falling asleep, and not the short nod-off you get on the sofa on a late game. This was a full fledged “I’m passing out for good for the night” kind of fall asleep. So the last thing I saw was a 6-6 tie. Funny thing is right before I stopped watching, Josh Lewin made the comment that the Diamondbacks / Rangers game was the last game going in the majors for the night. :)
Scott Feldman got the start, and got a technical quality start. Six innings, four hits, one walk, and three earned runs. Didn’t exactly light the town on fire, but his line isn’t that awful, either. His big mistake was a two run home run to Mark Reynolds in the first inning. That was 2/3 of his earned runs right there. We ran out six more pitchers besides Feldman. CJ Wilson, Jason Grilli, & Eddie Guardado threw scoreless innings. Darren O’Day gave up a single run, and Frank Francisco & Jason Jennings gave up two runs. Frankie’s was worst, because he only pitched one third of an inning. Jason Jennings I didn’t see at all, as I was asleep at that point. O’Day & Francisco gave up home runs for their runs. Francisco was another two run home run to Mark Reynolds. Reynolds had a good night.
Not nearly as good as Chris Davis, who is desperately in need of a few of the nights he had tonight. Chris went 4-5 plus a walk. He struck out once, but given how often he’s been striking out lately, one in a game is a serious improvement. They said on TV that Davis was the first Ranger to have a three hit game on the road trip, and it came in the last game of the trip. Unfortunately, Davis’ average after the 4-5 night was just .209. He needs several more of these – I really hope he turns it around, as he’s a great hitter when he’s not striking out at a rate that makes the slider down and away to Juan Gonzalez result in fewer strikeouts. Slider down and away to Juando was a sure fire strikeout, but nothing at the rate that Davis has been doing. So I’m hoping last night is the end of his major season slump so far. That they’ve stuck with him this far into it is proof the team likes him, but he needs to work it out pretty soon. I can’t imagine they’ll stay with him forever.
Funny thing is that as many pitchers as the Rangers ran out there (seven), the Diamondbacks had more. They ran nine pitchers out there in the twelve innings. Arizona starter Jon Garland threw six, but then no other Diamondback pitcher threw more than a full inning in relief. Chris Davis & David Murphy had back to back home runs in the 12th. Davis’ capped his 4-5 night.
A nice win, even if it came real late, and I was out cold for the night when it happened. I actually learned of the final score of the game from the Dallas Morning News. The real newspaper, not the website. That doesn’t happen much anymore. :)

This was a pretty darned good pitcher’s duel. Vicente Padilla vs. Dan Haren. After the last five games previous to this, it was quite the surprise. Actually, that wasn’t the surprise. The real surprise was that we ended up on the winning side of that.
Both starters went seven innings. Pidente gave up six hits, two walks, and just one run. Haren gave up four hits and a walk for two runs. However, as in most games like this, our hits were well placed. We had just four of them. One double (Teagarden), and three singles, but we got two runs out of it. Haren also struck out eight, so we weren’t exactly lighting it up. But it was just enough.
Ours came early, with a single run in the second and the third. The run off of Padilla came in the fifth. There’s not a lot to add about this one because the pitching was quite good.
Padilla keeps doing this, and his trade value will be sky high in July. ;)

OK, that was annoying. I have time to write about this, but I’d just spend a couple hundred words saying “That sucked”. So that’s all I’m doing for this one.

Taking a mulligan on the San Francisco series. Ran out of time, and I don’t feel like writing about a series sweep loss several days after the fact. :)

Taking a mulligan on the San Francisco series. Ran out of time, and I don’t feel like writing about a series sweep loss several days after the fact. :)

Taking a mulligan on the San Francisco series. Ran out of time, and I don’t feel like writing about a series sweep loss several days after the fact. :)

Figures. The Rangers play the Astros six times each year. This year they lose only one game. Guess which one I went to? That’s right, the one they lost. Since I don’t really feel about writing in detail on this one, I’ll go for a few bullet points:

• Vicente Padilla seemed sluggish, even though he technically had a quality start
• Chris Davis still strikes out too much, he should have been pinch hit for in the 9th
• We made some noise in the bottom of the ninth, but couldn’t bring it home
• Row 37 of Section 117 is really dark, given how far back it is under the overhang
• Darren Erstad in left? Man the Astros must be hurting.

I spoke with an Astros fan for a bit who was wearing a rainbow Astros jersey. Addressed myself as a Phillies fan, so we could talk some old Houston / Phillies rivalries. :)
On to San Francisco….

Two big things happened in tonight’s game. If you’re a real Rangers fan, you knew about them already, but just the same..

• Pudge Rodriguez became the all time #1 catcher with most games caught in the majors. Nobody else has caught more than Pudge. That’s an impressive number. First.
• Omar Vizquel tied Luis Apricio for all time hits for a player from Venezuela.

Those two are impressive feats. That Pudge did it in Arlington was as Josh Lewin called it “a gift from the baseball gods”. I was there with my wife the game that Pudge played his last as a Ranger. The applause for him on June 19, 2009 was just as great as it was on September 29, 2002.

The actual game itself seemed kind of “meh” other than the walkoff when compared to the stuff above. Matt Harrison came off the DL and pitched OK. Salty & Nelson Cruz had home runs. Kinsler stole two bases. Even Omar Vizquel stole one! The two new pen additions (Jason Grilli & Darren O’Day) tossed a few more shutout innings.

The walkoff was a bloop hit down the left field line. Was your usual fun walkoff win. But even this pales in comparison to me to the events of the rest of the game. It was just major for me. Only thing that would have made it better is if Vizquel also broke the record at the same time. But since he merely tied it, he’ll now have a chance to beat it back in San Francisco where he played for awhile. That will be nice for him, I’m sure.

Kevin Millwood continues to roll along in his attempt to play 2009 like he played when he was with Cleveland. Another strong outing of seven innings, just four hits, three walks, six strikeouts, and more importantly just a single earned run. Which came on a fifth inning solo home run by Pudge. Millwood looks really great, and you have to start wondering if he’ll get consideration for the All-Star game. I mean in mid June he’s 7-4 with an ERA of 2.62. He really does seemingly deserve consideration for the All-Star staff. That will seem quite weird, having a good Rangers pitcher in the All-Star game. If he does get in, you know it will garner more attention for us, as the announcers will go on about “The Rangers? Pitching?” To that, Jason Jennings followed up with two scoreless innings of his own to cap the victory.
Offensively, the Rangers were led by Ian Kinsler, who had two solo home runs – one in the first and one in the second. He also had a third hit (single), and scored on that hit, too. Nice night for him, after being in a slump for awhile. Kinsler wasn’t the only one with home runs. David Murphy also had a solo home run in the third. The three home runs were half of our runs. Michael Young also had a couple of RBI’s in the game, and Marlon Byrd had one, too. The hits were not very spread out. They were mostly bunched at the top of the lineup. Five of our nine hits were from the first two batters. The other four were from the fifth and sixth place batters. So nine hits were from four batters. The other five took ofers. The win was nice, the balance was not.
This officially claimed the silver boot for the Rangers for another season. I like playing the Astros, but does anyone really care about the boot? Outside of when we play the Astros, you never hear about it.

This was one of those “growing pains” games for Derek Holland. Most Rangers fans expect him to be great, but he is 22, and there won’t be games. Actually,it wasn’t totally awful, but the line wasn’t particuarly great, either. Five innings, five hits (not too bad), four walks (bad), and a home run. Derek gave up four earned runs in his five innings, which is certainly not good.
The Dodgers also tacked on two against Eddie Guardado in his 2/3 of an inning. He seems to be way more inconsistent this year. There’s still outings where he was good like he was in 2008, but the 2009 version isn’t nearly as automatic. Certainly he isn’t “everyday”.
Darren O’Day’s ERA is 0.82. Just sayin’… ;)
Offensively, I wanted to start with Ian Kinsler. His slump continues, with his batting average now at .260 after a 0-4 game. This game featured just six hits from Ranger players, two of them from Andruw Jones, everyone else just one. In fact, the only run of the game came from the only hit that wasn’t a single, that being Jones’ fourth inning solo home run.
There’s no shame in losing to the team with the best record in baseball, and it’s not like they were run over like roadkill, either. They played well as a team in the two losses, but you’d rather see 2-1 than 1-2 for sure.