This game started off poorly. Kris Benson started the game, and went four innings, giving up five hits and a walk. This lead to four earned runs on his slate. All in the first inning. So we were in an immediate hole. A feeling Rangers fans should be used to, unfortunately.
Offensively we brought it back in the third with a six spot of our own. That was enough to win the game, actually right there. It reminds me of something a friend of mine said a few years back. That was he doesn’t mind lots of offense, but he prefers it be balanced out, and not in bombs like that. He said 12-9 games don’t bother him, but when you get like a 2-2-1-3-1 type of deal, not a 9 and a 3. Anyway, we had twelve hits in all, and the hits were pretty balanced. Everyone had just one, except Omar Vizquel who I think had his best day of the spring, going 3-5 with a run and an RBI. One of Omar’s hits was a double. We had two more of those (Murphy & B Harrison) as well as a triple (Boggs), and a home run (Marlon Byrd).
Byrd is doing pretty well, and has apparently pushed out Andruw Jones, as some quotes came out saying that Jones would not be added to our roster by Friday (first out day for him).
Yesterday and today were busy days for me at work, I didn’t even get to box score watch this game, and I probably shouldn’t be taking the time to write this little bit, but I didn’t want to take two mulligans in a row. That’s for an 8 or 9 game losing streak in August (which I hope doesn’t happen, mind you).

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. I’m afraid to admit it after so many years of so many failed attempts at this… But I’m starting to get excited about Brandon McCarthy again. Today he was darn near perfect in the game against the Padres.
Brandon went four innings, gave up NO HITS, two walks, and struck out three. His spring ERA is (I believe) now at 1.80 and is 2-0. According to the radio guys, the only reason he came out at all was that other pitchers needed to get work, and Brandon continued to work down in the bullpen. I have a good feeling. Granted, being a Rangers fan having a good feeling about a pitcher can mean jack, but man it feels good, doesn’t it?
Josh Hamilton went 3-3 with an RBI and two runs scored. Two of his hits were doubles, and he sounded good on the radio. Ian Kinsler also went 3-3 with two runs scored.
Joaquin Arias went 1-2 and kept his batting average at at stupid high rate (.522). Funny thing is it’s not as high as Adam Melhuse’s which is sitting at .615! Obviously that won’t stay, but it’s always amusing to see gaudy numbers like that.
Nelson Cruz got it going early with a three run home run in a part of the game I didn’t get to hear due to work. Cruz appears to have pushed out Andruw Jones, I can’t see where Jones fits now especially with Cruz doing so well.
Willie Eyre also threw a scoreless inning, striking out two in his comeback from Tommy John.
Nice to see such a dominating performance by Brandon McCarthy. Hopefully my saying he is the key a couple of days ago in a season preview was what he needed. :) hahahahaha

Time for another mulligan. Too busy at work today.

A trio of Texas Rangers hit their first home runs of the spring. They are Joaquin Arias, Chris Davis, and Michael Young.
The big moment for Texas came in the fourth inning when we scored six, which included Chris Davis’ solo home run.
Kevin Millwood was better than the 10 run fiasco he had last time, but still wasn’t great. Five innings, six hits, one walk, four earned runs.
Joaquin Arias only had one at bat, but got a hit. He is now batting over .500 for the spring! Metcalf, Byrd, & Elvis all had two hits. )
Sorry for the lack of writing. I had forgotten one of my co workers was on vacation this week, and the time I would have spent writing was spent picking up some of his work.
Today the Rangers have a scheduled off day again – there’s a lot more of those this year than usual.

First, this was a bonus TV game. MLB Network was carrying the White Sox feed for the game, and as such I was able to watch this one on TV. They talked to Buddy Bell, who is involved in some advisory capacity with the White Sox now. Wasn’t that bad, actually for watching the other team’s announcers – they knew our team, they had a lot of nice things to say about our big prospects, especially Justin Smoak & Max Ramirez.
Matt Harrison started this game, and looked quite good. Four innings, four hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and just one run. And that run was a solo home run. In fact, home runs were pretty much the order of the day for the Chicago offense. They had four home runs off of four different Ranger pitchers. Three of them were solo shots, but the big one was the last one, which came on the last pitch of the game. Brian Anderson jacked a walkoff grand slam to end the game. That was Anderson’s second home run of the afternoon, actually. But that’s the crappy end of the game spring pitching.
The guys who count for the regular season were better than that. Derrick Turnbow pitched “OK”. His line doesn’t show it, but he seemed to labor a bunch. Josh Rupe gave up two walks and a hit (with a run) in his inning. Jennings had two innings, but four hits and a run. Meh on the last couple of guys.
Offensively, I’m surprised we had as many runs as we did, because we had just six hits, and three of those were by Joaquin “En Fuego” Arias. Arias was 3-4 today after going 3-4 the previous game. If he keeps this up for another week or so, it might make the final cuts difficult. But outside of Arias, we managed just a double by Marlon Byrd, a bloop single by Omar Vizquel, & a single by Chris Davis.
This loss now drops us to three in a row in the loss column, and drops us one game under .500 for the spring.

Well, the other half of the Rangers team stayed behind in Surpise to play the Royals, and this half of the squad didn’t fare as good as the one that went away to play LA.
The story of this game was the effectiveness of former Ranger pitcher Robinson Tejeda. He went four innings, gave up four hits and three walks, but also struck out seven Rangers of the 12 outs recorded. Another former Ranger, Jamey Wright followed with two innings of shutout ball. The remaining two KC pitchers also threw goose eggs. I wouldn’t get too worked up about Tejeda. I followed him in Philly, I obviously followed him in Texas. You should know as well as I do he has these flashes for short periods, and relapses.
Anyway, our offense was pretty darned ineffective. Only one guy had anything going on, and that was Joaquin Arias, who had three of the seven overall hits the guys wearing Texas on their chests got, however none of his hits led to a score. The only run we got at all was a double by Marlon Byrd, who scored Hank Blalock. That was it.
Pitching wise for Texas, Vicente Padilla threw three, gave up three hits and two walks and three earned runs. Meh. One of the hits was a two run home run. In fact, the other run of the game was against Frank Francisco; again a home run.
So no, neither game on Friday was particularly fun for a Rangers fan.
Saturday brings something unannounced. A Rangers game on television. It’s not the Rangers guys, but the game will be on MLB Network on Saturday afternoon, presumably using White Sox coverage (assuming it’s not blacked out).

In the first of the two split squad games, the Rangers played against the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles in Phoenix. While this was the road game, it wasn’t the usual road spring game in that about half our regulars were here, and half were left behind in Surprise to play the other game. Really seemed like a split squad from a quick glance at the scorecard.
Anyway, the Rangers jumped out early in this one. In the first inning, Josh Hamilton hit a two run home run, and then was immediately followed by a solo home run by Nelson Cruz. And then.. well, that was it. All of our scoring was done by the fourth batter of the game. We had just three more hits the entire rest of the game (one of them was a second hit by Hamilton). So a promising started just ended there with a “promising start”.
Of course, the big ol’ “4” in the error column of the linescore has a lot to say about it. Two of the errors were by pitchers (Mathis & Harrison). Duran missed a catch, and Adam Melhuse threw one away. Sloppy play there for sure. Only one run was unearned, and we did turn four double plays in the game.
Pretty much all of the Dodgers offense was also early. Our starter in this one was Doug Mathis, who went three innings, allowing three of the four Dodger runs (one was the aforementioned unearned one). The Rangers threw eight pitchers out there in all, which is a huge number when you consider that Mathis threw three innings. The only other Ranger pitcher to give up a run was the final one, Thomas Diamond who walked two, not really helping himself at all.
Somewhat annoying that we got out to that kind of start and then nothing.
Fun note in that the Rangers did not take Andruw Jones with them in the split squad game against the Dodgers. :)

This is the time of year where you here a lot of platitudes about how scores don’t matter, we’re just working on things, it doesn’t matter, etc, etc, etc. Even Jamey Newberg wrote about Brandon McCarthy last night saying we shouldn’t get so up about it for the same reason we shouldn’t get too worried about Millwood and the 10 ER the other day (but come on Jamey, that was bad even for spring!). Still, I agree with Jamey’s base point. It’s hard not to get excited about McCarthy’s performance.
Four innings pitched on just 47 pitches. One hit. No walks, no runs, and three strikeouts. While I couldn’t see it, I heard bits of it, and it sounded pretty good. Man, I hope this is it, that he’s finally figured it out. I’m so tired of hearing about bad Jon Daniels trades, I would love one of the ones generally accepted to be in the “bad” ledger to be good after all this time. It is a good thing to see.
The pen was pretty darn good itself. Of the four relievers (Jennings, Eyre, Guardado, Feliz), only one run was allowed. That was Eddie, who gave up a solo home run. Netfali Feliz was almost as good as McCarthy. He went two innings, gave up no hits, but did walk one. The other three guys had just a lone hit each. The only walk was Feliz’s one. So yeah, it was a very well pitched game.
Our offense was pretty good, what with fifteen hits in all. It was fairly balanced. We had a couple of ofers, and several guys with multiple hits. Always nice to see. Taylor Teagarden homered again. Four more doubles from the doubles machine that is the pro team in Arlington…
Random feel good remark: One gets the feeling we made the right choice in moving Gerald Laird out, we’re probably going to be fine with our catching tandem who takes up 21 letters on the back of two uniforms (where have you gone Ed Ott).
Seattle on the other hand was not even close. They sounded sloppy on the radio. Whenever your line score has just about as many errors as hits, it’s not a good day. The Mariners managed only four hits off our guys (as was detailed above), but they also committed three errors in the field, leading to two unearned runs against Jarrod Washburn. A reliever by the name of Roy Corcoran was the big stink bomb for the M’s, giving up four earned runs in just one third of an inning (with three hits and two walks). Based solely on this season, one gets the feeling that Seattle isn’t going to change much in 2009.
Although I will want to see the M’s at least once, as I’d like to see Griffey in person again. I remember being at the last Seattle game in Arlington in 1999 thinking that would probably be the last time I saw him. I was right for a long time – I never saw him in person during any of his years in Cincinnati. Always liked him, be good to see him again.
Also, shouldn’t we be hearing about the first round of spring training roster moves by now? We’re due to send out several guys to minor league camp about now, aren’t we?

Blame me for this one. In my office at work is a guy who is a big Giants fan, as he was imported from San Francisco. In the sixth inning, I send him an email with a link to the box score, and merely said this.. “You’re losing, bitch!”. You know, the usual fan garbage. So about 45 minutes later, I get an email back from him saying “Rally time, bitch!” At that point, the Giants had tied the score at 4. Then in a real Karma moment, the Giants put up single runs in the 8th and 9th to take the game 6-4. So blame me, my mouthing off cost us the game! ;)
Scott Feldman started the game for us, and threw quite well. Three innings, no runs and just one hit. Walked two, but it didn’t hurt him. Brendan Donnelly followed, and didn’t fare nearly as well, as he went just one inning, and surrendered two. Everyone else after that gave up a single run. Only Feldman escaped unscathed. On the ledger is Luis Mendoza, Casey Daigle, Elizardo Ramirez, & Bryan Corey. Daigle & the Lizard’s runs were unearned, though.
It was another one of those games where no one dominated offensively. Nine different Rangers had one hit each. Six were singles, and there was one double (Andruw Jones), one triple (Mike Young), & a home run (David Murphy).

This one can be traced to the big old ugly number in the top of the second inning by the Dodgers. They plated seven runners. If that wasn’t ugly enough, they surrounded it with a run in the first, and two in the third. The score was 10-5 after three innings. Pitching was NOT the name of this game.
Kevin Millwood led the stink brigade this game. Mark Clark & Chan Ho Park only dreamed about being this bad. Three innings, twelve hits, two walks, TEN earned runs. The only saving grace of that is that none of them were home runs, but that’s really weak. Millwood faced 21 batters in his three innings of work, and ten of them scored. That’s pretty awful. Of the remaining three runs the Dodgers scored, only one of them was earned (against Mr. Anna Benson), although Benson threw the same amount of innings as Stinky Kevin, and surrendered one tenth of the runs.
We were kind of out of it the entire game. Never led, much less be tied (excluding the 0-0 start of the game score).
Offensively the leader this game was Brandon Boggs. He went 3-5 with an RBI and two runs scored. In fact, the longball was the order of the day for the Rangers, and if it wasn’t for that 7 spot we gave up, we probably would have won this. The four home runs were by Brandon Boggs (solo shot), Hank Blalock, Andruw Jones (two run), and Taylor Teagarden, who had a three run home run. In fact, that’s all seven runs the Rangers scored right there. Good classic Rangers – 100% of our runs on the longball. :) Jones’ home run was his first of the spring, and I’m sure Ned Colletti loved that little factoid.