The Rangers picked up win #3 and their second in a row on Friday with a 6-2 win over the San Diego Padres.
The Rangers scored early with a 4 spot in the first, and a two spot in the second, and then that was it for their offense. Still not much power this spring. 13 hits, two double, 11 singles. No home runs, yet again. That’s turning out to be a bit of a surprise, tell you the truth. So long as we win, it’s not a problem, but it does seem uncharacteristic for sure.
The pitching was a better story here. Matt Harrison started, went three innings, gave up just three hits and no runs, walking nobody. Tommy Hunter followed, gave up just two hits and a single run in his three innings. The remaining three pitchers aren’t guys who are supposed to be in the majors, so their numbers aren’t as much of a concern to me, but it’s still nice to see a combined three innings and one run with no walks by them.
A couple of former Rangers made appearances in this game for the Pads. Jerry Hairson Jr went 1-3, and Adrian Gonzalez took an ofer. Former catcher Chris Stewart went 0-1.

The Rangers finally unloaded on someone in a way their general reputation says they should. Sadly, it’s just win #2 out of seven games so far. A 16-5 win is always good no matter where it comes in the year, whether it’s Game 7 of spring, to Game 25 of the regular season to Game 4 of the World Series in a sweep.
I’ll start with the Rangers pitching. Scott Feldman started, and continues to have a “meh” spring. Gave up three runs on five hits in 2 and a third innings. However, the pen that followed him was significantly better. In particular, Dustin Nippert was quite good, tossing three shutout innings and giving up just a lone hit. The only other pitcher to give up any runs was Warner Madrigal, who had three hits and two runs in his lone inning of work. The pitching was good in regards to walks again. Only two, and both of those by Scott Feldman.
There was a lot of offense, but again, not a lot of power. There was one home run, by Chris Davis, and seven doubles (by seven different Rangers). There were also 15 other singles, so there was a lot of offense, just not a ton of power. Taylor Teagarden drove in three, as did Chris Davis. Elvis Andrus, Nelson Cruz, & Pedro Borbon each drove in two, all the rest were scattered amongst various Rangers with single RBI’s.
Colorado helped with three errors. Their starter (Aaron Cook) was pretty awful, gave up nine hits and nine runs (only 5 earned – see errors) in 2.2 innings of work. Only walked one, though.
Nice to see the big win, but kind of a bummer it’s just #2 of the spring, however.

The Rangers record this spring drops to an abysmal 1-4-1 after another loss, this one a 6-3 game to the Seattle Mariners.
For the third game in a row, we hit double digits in hits, but still came up on the short side of the offensive stick. The offensive leader for Texas was a guy by the name of Ray Olmedo. Not a household name, and I’d bet some money he won’t be with the big club terribly long. But this game, he went 3-4 with a run scored. Again, we had little power. Of the 13 hits, 12 of them were singles. There was just one double (Chris Davis).
Speaking of Davis, he’s raking this spring. As I write this, I still have recaps for about six games after this one, and taking that into account, he’s got some gaudy numbers overall.
Our offense was spread out, despite there being 13 hits. Only Olmedo & Mitch Moreland had more than a single hit.
Piching wise, CJ Wilson made another start. Not too bad. Three innings. Had more earned runs than hits (2 vs 1). Only walked one, so the Mariners were highly efficient there in scoring, since both their runners against Wilson scored.
Neftali Feliz gave up four hits and four runs in his two innings of work. That’s not good.
The rest of our pen was scoreless over four innings. The entire staff walked just two this game, continuing a good trend this spring.

Ian Kinsler led the offense this game going 2-2 with a walk. He wasn’t the only one with two hits, though. Pedro Borbon & Nelson Cruz had two each. Overall, three doubles, a triple, and 10 singles – still no home runs, though. David Murphy had the most RBI’s with 3.
Rich Harden appeared to be pedestrian again, going 2.2 innings, and giving up four earned runs. But that was mostly his own fault as he broke the tradition this spring and walked three guys. I believe a record so far for Rangers pitching in 2010.
Darren Oliver had another scoreless inning, as did Clay Rapada & Willie Eyre.
Meh. A tie.

Brandon McCarthy started this game against the Angels, and immediately proceeded to let the first four Angel batters get on base. It’s spring, so it’s not such a big a deal, but you never really want to see that, as it led to an early 2-0 hole the Rangers never climbed out of. Those were the only two runs McCarthy gave up in his two innings of work, but almost everyone else gave up runs. In fact, the only Ranger pitcher (there were 7) who didn’t give up any runs was Geoff Geary. Zack Phillips was the worst, giving up five hits and four earned runs in a single inning (facing eight batters). However, it wasn’t all awful, as the general lack of walks stayed here, too. The Rangers gave up just two walks.
Offensively, the Rangers banged out 13 hits. Still no home runs to speak of. We have a few, but we’re down near the bottom of the league in that regard. Three doubles and a triple, and pile of singles accounted for the 9 runs we did score. It wasn’t enough, though, as the Rangers gave up 13.
Strangely enough most of the offense gave from the fifth inning on (Angels got 11 then, and the Rangers got 7). The only inning where nobody scored was the second.

Got home from church and found out that Sunday’s game was rained out. Was hoping they’d play, but I guess it’s more MLB 10: The Show instead. :)
Game won’t be made up – not officially in the standings, although there will be a B game tomorrow where today’s guys will get their work in.
Read somewhere that this is the first rainout since 2007 in the spring. I could have sworn that wasn’t the case, but I can’t recall offhand.

I didn’t get a lot of time to listen to this one, as I was out and about running several errands. I was spending some time with my daughter, and I did have the game on the truck radio. She did ask me a few questions like “Daddy, what’s a foul ball”, and “What is such and such”.. That was cool, because she’s asking, this might be the year I get her to want to watch herself. Or at least teach her the game. She knows home runs, of course – because as we should all remember from 20 year old advertising.. Chicks dig the longball.
Anyway, this was another well pitched game on both sides. Tommy Hunter started for Texas, and looked good. Two innings, just one hit, and a couple of strikeouts. The first run was scored on his watch, but it was an unearned run. That was due to the rather sloppy play the Rangers had at points through the game. The other run KC got was later on when Willie Eyre was on the mound. That too was unearned, and was the direct result of 18 year old Leury Garcia.
Leury Garcia had quite the busy day, and was responsible for both runs scored in the top and bottom halves of the seventh inning. In the top of the inning, he threw a ball away from short, allowing a runner to reach, then just a batter or two later, he committed another error attempting to field a caught stealing throw. However, he made up for it in the bottom part of the frame by grounding in the only Rangers run. He was unusually busy for a guy who wore the number 98 on his back.
Overall, not much offense. Rangers had just five scattered hits – one was a double. The Royals too also had seven scattered hits. Of the 12 total, nobody had more than one.
However, the coolest thing to come out of today’s game was that the Rangers pitchers did not walk anyone. Early on in camp, that’s a fantastic thing to see. There’s a million reasons you can bring up to explain that. But despite all of them, it’s still QUITE cool to see a column of zeroes under BB in the box score. What’s even better than this is the fact that Ranger pitchers have walked just two batters ALL SPRING so far. Neftali Feliz walked one in Game 2, and Rich Harden walked one in the opener. All told, that’s 18 pitchers tossing a total of 26 innings over three games. Just two walks. Wow.

Spring Training Game 2 was one that I didn’t realize was on the air. I had forgotten to check the Rangers games not on the radio to see if the opponent’s radio coverage was on. It was, but I didn’t notice that until the score was already 2-1 KC in the seventh. I listened towards the end, but not much excitement there.
Offensively, this was a different beast than yesterday’s game. Yesterday’s had 16 runs and 28 hits between the teams. Today’s game had just 6 runs and 13 hits. Yesterday there was just 3 or 4 Rangers used that didn’t have a hit. Today, it’s the opposite. Just six had hits – nobody had more than one. Of those hits, just two were doubles (Nelson Cruz, Max Ramirez). Not a lot of power here at all.
The other side wasn’t much better. They had seven hits, and two of ’em were extra bases (2B – Billy Butler, 3B – Rick Ankiel), the rest were singles. They just pushed more across.
Zack Greinke started the game for the Royals, and from what I’ve read and see in the box score, he was as advertised. Three scoreless innings, with just one hit given up. Other than the single he gave up, the other nine batters he faced were outs. In the three innings of work, he faced just ten batters. No idea how dominant that was, as the box scores in spring don’t list pitch counts, but one over the minimum is always a cool thing to see.
Rangers pitchers counted four today. Each of them pitched two innings. The best was Dustin Nippert (third). He gave up no hits in his two innings. Feldman gave up 3, CJ Wilson 2, and Neftali Feliz gave up two. Overall, a decent pitching performance, if not too far leaning towards the great side. Eight innings of work, seven hits, four earned runs. Just a lone walk, though (Feliz), so there wasn’t a ton of wildness.
After game one, I had that pipe dream where I was going to see constant spring scores of double digits every day, and a winning percentage of like .850 for the spring or something. Ah, the innocence of Spring Game 1 comes crashing back to earth with Game 2. I shouldn’t be surprised by that.
Saturday we’re back on the radio again.

Well, today was the day that the season started. Oh, the season opener isn’t until about a month from now. And there were a few intrasquad games earlier this week. But given that I write something about all the games (well, about 95% of them), the season really started for me today, since I have to now write about the games again. Like most off seasons I think I’m going to have these grand plans realized of writing multiple times a week about what’s going on. If I’m feeling particularly lofty in my goals, I think I’m gonna write like Jamey Newberg or Joey Matschulat – yeah right. :) But I do enjoy talking about the games, so here goes another season. My 12th since I started this site in December of 1998.
My wife and kids were out at the Dallas Arboretum today, so I had the house to myself – for most of the game. I sat down with my battery operated portable radio (cool that game 1 was on the radio), and was playing “MLB 10: The Show” on my Playstation 3 at the same time, so it was baseball overload. The Rangers were the visiting team here, and as such batted first. The first inning was fairly uneventful, except for an unearned run that Rich Harden gave up.
The unearned run was helped along by Jarrod Saltamacchia, who hit a runner trying to steal second. It then allowed the guy to go to third, who scored not long after that. Dave Barnett commented that he hoped that was just “first spring game” issues, and not a larger problem, as the throw was way off the bag, apparently. But Salty made up for that in the next inning when he walloped a three run home run.
Later on in the game, Matt Brown (our Rule 5 guy) hit another three run home run. That wasn’t the only way we scored. Julio Borbon got on, stole second, was pushed to third by a Michael Young groundout, and then scored. We also had run scoring doubles (Vlad Guerrero plating Mike Young). That hit by Guerrero was his first hit and RBI in a Ranger uniform. That STILL seems weird to me, as I’ve been following Guerrero since he was in Montreal.
Colby Lewis came in and handed me a big bottle of “shut up juice” by pitching a perfect inning. Yeah, it’s just spring game 1, but it sounded impressive on the radio for sure.
Another notable was the appearance of Alexi Ogando, who if you’re reading this site know has been trapped in legal immigration hell for the last few years and couldn’t pitch. This was his first appearance as a Ranger since he was drafted I think 5-6 years ago. He struck out his first batter, and went on to pitch a scoreless inning.
All told, our pitchers (seven of them) tossed a great game. Of the three runs the Royals scored, two of them were unearned, and all told, the Rangers pitching gave up just seven hits in nine innings. Not bad, not bad at all. Colby Lewis was perfect, and Tanner Scheppers was as well. Doug Mathis had the worst performance, giving up three hits and the lone earned run in his two innings of work. Everyone else gave up just one hit (Harden, Snyder, Ogando, Strop). It was a really well pitched outing by our staff.
Can’t say the same for the Royals. The Royals threw five pitchers out there, and none of them escaped unscathed. Kyle Davies started (5H, 4ER), and he was followed by former Ranger Robinson Tejeda (4H, 2ER), Philip Humber (4H, 1ER), Anthony Lerew (5H, 2ER), & Matt Herges (3H, 4R, 3ER). Of course when the Rangers have 13 runs on 21 hits, you’re going to see numbers like that.
Take a look at the linked box score, you can see all the carnage. It was really nice to have a baseball game to listen to. Had I been outside, I would have had a beer, but I enjoyed the hot dogs and the pink lemonade I had while the game was on.
Oh, and finally.. Victor Rojas has left MLB Network to go back to play by play calling. I wish Vic had stayed here. No offense to Dave Barnett, but I really REALLY liked Victor Rojas. In time, I’ll probably like Dave too, but I liked Vic’s way of saying what he felt. Plus Vic remains a friend, and I’ll never forget how he contacted me years ago when he first got the Rangers job. So good luck to you personally Vic. But your new employers? The heck with ’em. :)