Uh-oh. Another well pitched game given away by the bullpen. That’s happened a little too much lately. While it’s not a true problem I think, the fact that it’s happened more than once is a little concerning.
Kevin Millwood started the game in search of his first win against the Twins (!). Period. He pitched more than well enough to win. Six innings, six hits, two walks, and just two runs allowed. Both of those were on a two run home run to Jason Kubel. So Kevin was keeping things well in check. Felt good turning it over to the bullpen.
Jason Grilli came on first, and threw a scoreless, one hit inning of relief. That felt good.
What didn’t feel good was what CJ Wilson did. One inning, three hits, one walk, and THREE runs allowed – all earned. CJ was also credited with a blown save, and loss. Good, he was total ass this game.
Offensively, We had a couple of doubles, a Nelson Cruz home run, and a pile of singles. Didn’t exactly light it up, as Scott Baker kept us mostly in check. 7IP, 6H, 3R, 6K, 1BB. Their bullpen didn’t allow us any movement, but it didn’t matter.
Was a pretty deflating feeling in the bottom of the eighth, so there wasn’t much fun to be had in the top of the ninth. Another late inning loss. Sigh.

I’m taking a pass on this one, but not for the usual reason. This evening after the game was over, I found that a friend of mine had to go to the emergency room. She had just had a miscarriage a few days before, and had come home after having that procedure done. She had to go back to the ER tonight, and has been worked on all night. It’s almost 3AM now, and I’m gonna crash. My mind has been there tonight, plus I’m sure a lot of tomorrow will be spent dealing with fallout of her ER trip tonight. So I’m giving this one a pass – just wanted to say why, it’s not a casual bailout.
God bless you my friend, may you be healed both physically and emotionally. You’re too young for this kind of stuff.

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

P.S. Scott Feldman was great, wasn’t he? Nice to see him getting some love on ESPN (they had him on Baseball Tonight via telephone)

Darnit.

You know, after the game was over, I tried to think of some cool way to say how great this win was. I thought and thought, and couldn’t come up with something good. All I wanted to say was “Man, that game felt great. The Yankees lost.” This felt better than most Ranger wins against the Yankees, too. I can’t quantify that, it just “felt” better.
AJ Burnett was actually quite good. Went six innings, gave up just two hits, and struck out twelve. That’s 12 out of 18 batters he got outs on he struck out. However, one of the hits was a three run home run to Ian Kinsler. Then when Burnett came out, his successor gave up another three run home run – this time to Chris Davis – something I’m sure brought a smile to Jamey Newberg. Ian Kinsler followed up with another home run in the 8th. We just overpowered them. Which is no easy feat.
Dustin Nippert was completely ineffective, but was lucky as hell. He didn’t make it out the fourth inning, and when he did exit, he had thrown 98 pitches. He also bloody walked seven batters during this time, and I believe only one of them scored. Jason Grilli followed up, and got the win, but deserved it. 2.1 innings of perfect baseball. CJ & Frankie finished the game out, not allowing any runs either.
I listened to the game on the radio in front of the computer, and had the MLB Gameday going too. I used their Twitter integration to chat with others about the game, which was kind of cool. Enjoyed that.
What else is cool is Anaheim lost and Boston lost. Good. Good, Good.
Oh, finally, after last night’s game, I wrote that they need to end the Jason Jennings experiment. That turned out to be pretty prophetic, as before this game, they designated Jennings for assignment to make room for Pedro Strop. I usually don’t get my baseball wishes answered that fast. :)

As has been my policy for the last few years, I don’t write about losses to the Yankees.
I will say this, however.. I think it’s time for Jason Jennings to go. It was a nice experiment for awhile. Drive through, please.

I really should know better. I really should. You see, last night my wife got something in from Amazon.com she’s been waiting years for. One of her all time favorite TV shows was finally released on DVD. This would be thirtysomething. Anyway, she had the big TV after the kids went to bed, so I was going to watch the game when she was done. I had avoided the scoreboard by not going to ESPN or my Yahoo front page or anything like that. I was good. And then popped up something I forgot about. The Firefox plugin TwitterFox decided to tell me what Victor Rojas was saying. And he said this. GAH! Now I don’t blame Victor, I blame myself for not turning off the plugin. I’ve figured out I need to avoid Facebook when I’m watching a game timeshifted (Hello Hannah), but now I need to turn off TwitterFox, too. Bleargh! So I knew the Rangers won before I started watching any of it. I did watch part of the game, the bits where the Rangers scored, pretty much.
As I’ve said numerous times before, anytime there’s 19 runs scored in a game, there’s not going to be a lot of good pitching. For the most part, that held up here, too.
Kevin Millwood had a horrendous first inning, but mostly settled down after that. Total line 5.2 innings, 7 hits, 5 runs, 5 walks, two home runs. Blah.
Jason Grilli. Ugh. Zero innings pitched, 1 hit, one walk. Both scored.
Frank Francisco. One inning. 3 hits, 1 walk, 2 earned runs. Bleargh! Even John Wetteland didn’t give us heart attacks quite LIKE THAT!
On the other side… Joba “Fist Pump” Chamberlain.. 4 innings, 9 hits, 7 runs, 3 walks. No home runs, though. He was bad.
Chad Gaudin. 3.2 innings pitched, 7 hits, 3 runs, 3 walks, 2 home runs.
Domaso Marte finished for the Yankes, and went 1.1 innings, not allowing any runs, but that LOWERED his ERA to 11.05.
The best pitcher of the night was Neftali Feliz. Two innings, just one hit, no walks, 2 k’s, no RUNS! O’Day also threw a zero on his line score, but he was just 0.1 innings pitched.
That’s the pitching. Offensively, the Rangers had 16 hits, the Yankees had 12. The only Ranger to take an ofer was Marlon Byrd. Everyone else had at least one. The guys with multiples were Young (2-5), Kinsler (2-5), Chris Davis (2-4), Elvis Andrus (3-5), and Josh Hamilton (4-6). There were two home runs for Texas. A solo shot in the fifth by Nelson Cruz, and a two run shot that just cleared the wall in right in the 7th scoring two. There were three doubles in the game, but it was mostly singles, as we had 11 of them. It was a lot. The Rangers pounded on Mr. Chamberlain.
Then we had to fight off the inevitable Yankees comeback in the bottom of the ninth. However, since I saw the final score before I watched it, I didn’t have nearly the nailbiting that most Rangers fans had. :)
Still, a win is a win, and it’s nice to get out of the Bronx with some of those. Let’s see what Derek Holland is made out of Wednesday night.

Scott Feldman comes in and shuts down the Rays to restore order to the win column for the Texas Rangers. Scott has been fantastic this year, but if you’re reading this you don’t need to be told that. He did turn in a performance today that was very cool. He did something a Rangers pitcher hasn’t done in ages, and that’s strike out eleven hitters. Scott went seven innings in all, and that’s 21 outs. 11 of them were K’s.
It didn’t stop there, either. Darren O’Day struck out the side in his one inning of work, and Frank Francisco had one of his own, too. That’s 15 K’s out of 27 total outs. Really nice going there.
The Rays were held to just five hits in all. Just one was a double by Pat Burrell, and all the rest are singles. Burrell was the only one with more than one hit.
On our side, Pudge caught the game, and went 1-2 with a walk. Pudge? WALK? What the… He also drove in two of the four Rangers runs (Michael Young had the other two). There wasn’t a ton of offense on our side either, but we didn’t need a ton.
That’s thanks to Scott Feldman, who has to be a serious lock for top of the rotation in 2010. If we insult him by not starting him in the rotation again, he should walk away from the Rangers. :)

A couple of home runs (Young, Byrd), a triple (Young), a double (Teagarden), and three singles weren’t enough. The Rangers lost in 10 innings.
I hate writing about those almost as much as I hate writing about Yankees losses. If we go into the Bronx this coming week and are bad, I’ll have an easy time with my updates. :)
One positive, Michael Young had another three hit game. That brings him to 159 hits with 39 games left. One hit per game gives him 198, I think he can pick that up easily enough and get to 200. :)

We’ve had decent luck against Tampa Bay starter Scott Kazmir – or at least my memory tells me that. So I was kind of surprised when I watched this game and he was the Scott Kazmir that “Scott Kazmir” says Scott Kazmir should be. Not that one who was just an average pitcher.
Against Texas on Friday, Scott pretty much shut down the Rangers, holding us scoreless through seven plus innings. That was finally stopped when Taylor Teagarden hit a home run off of him in the 8th to lead off. That was followed up by RBI’s from Marlon Byrd & Andruw Jones. Jones’ RBI I don’t understand – I missed it live, in that his box score shows no hits, and no sac fly. Not sure how he was credited with his.
There wasn’t a lot of Rangers offense. Six hits in all, and three of them from Michael Young (2 1B, 1 2B). Byrd & Andrus singled, and there was the Teagarden home run. But when Kazmir was pitching like that, there wasn’t much to go around.
Dustin Nippert took the mound and pitched like a lot of Rangers pitchers in late August – “meh”. Five innings, seven hits, five runs (four earned) two walks, and three strikeouts. The pen was pretty good (nothing allowed), but the runs against Nippert were all that the Rays needed for the win.

Well, Thursday was my 44th birthday, and I headed out to Arlington for my tradition of attending a game on my birthday. I’ve done that as long as I can remember. I’ve mentioned this here before, but if you didn’t know I go on my birthday. If they’re not in town, I go on the closest calendar day to August 20th. I have to confess when they signed Pudge, I didn’t want him starting on Wednesday night. I wanted him starting on Thursday for the first time, so it would be my birthday game. That didn’t happen. But I got to see him in the dugout! Wheeeee!
I did get to see Derek Holland in person, and he didn’t seem to be “on” this game. He struggled in places, and while he still got the win, and didn’t allow a ton of runs to score, it wasn’t the smoothest outing I would think. Overall, his line was 5.1 innings, 83 pitches, seven hits, no walks, 3 k’s, and just one run allowed. The reason it was just one run was in thanks to Netfali Feliz. In the sixth, Holland loaded the bases, and was pulled by Ron Washington. In came Feliz. This was something I also wanted to see, and while he didn’t hit 100, there were several 97’s and 98’s, and watching him warm up, it really looked like Walter Johnson. I thought Feliz’ movement in warming up really really looked like the old pitcher for the Washington Senators, Walter “Big Train” Johnson. Willie Eyre and Jason Jennings also tossed soreless innings onto this game, but the big moment was the second pitch that Feliz threw. With the bases loaded, he got Joe Crede to hit a squibber over to Michael Young, who stepped on third, and then threw to first for the inning ending double play. Just felt then like it killed the Twins. From that point onward, it was all smooth sailing for Rangers pitching.
The Rangers hitting was quite good, too. In all, we had seventeen hits. As I’ve said many times before, that many hits leads to a lot of things like “Every Ranger starter had at least one hit”. Which is what happened. They all had at least one. We had three guys with three hits (Borbon, Young, & Blalock). Borbon chipped in with his first career major league home run, a pull job down the right field line, just to the left of the wedgie. In all, there was a lot of extra base hits. We had three doubles (Andrus, Young, Borbon) and four home runs (Byrd twice, Borbon, & Cruz). That Borbon was even here to get the shot when Cruz came back from the DL is a testament to how hot Borbon has been since first coming up recently. I’m glad he’s sticking around.
Hank Blalock had three sharp hits, and he’s been batting worse than Chris Davis was when he was sent down. Makes you wonder what’s going on there.
The multiple home runs was a great, and we almost had six. Ian Kinsler upper cutted one that went WAY WAY up – over the foul pole high, but just to the left of the pole. The other one was a ball that Michael Young hit, that bounced off the top of the left field wall, and back in play. There was a video review of the ball, and man, it just missed being another home run by literally an inch or so. So we had four homers, but could have quite easily have had six. Nice to see the offense going.
The Rangers also turned three double plays, which I’m sure helped. :)
We head out on the road to Tampa, New York, & Minnesota to close out the Metrodome. That will be hard trip, and if we can do it without losing any more ground to Anaheim, we could be in good shape. New York will be the hardest, as they’re doing quite well at the moment.
One last thing about Borbon. I don’t think he should be wearing #29. That number should be a plaque hanging in left field with the numbers 26, 34, & 42.