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Vicente Pidente comes back from his being placed on waivers, and going unclaimed. I don’t think anyone thought he’d start plunking Red Sox, but you always wonder, eh? Anyway, he was pretty good on Sunday afternoon. Seven innings, four hits, four walks, and two earned runs (three overall). Just 99 pitches for the namesake of the Padilla Flotilla. While I never thought he’d be gone this past weekend, one has to figure he’s definitely done after 2009 here, if not traded by the end of July. Padilla did help himself out a bit by picking off Kevin Youkilis from second early on.
Offensively, we got to Daisuke Matsuzaka pretty good. In the 5.2 innings he pitched, we hit him for 10 hits and five earned runs. No Ranger walked, and eight struck out, so he wasn’t totally awful, but still. That’s a decent showing against one of the Sox’ better pitchers. Three doubles, a triple, and two home runs powered the Rangers offense. The highlight was Nelson Cruz almost getting a cycle, just missing the single. Cruz & Murphy both had good days with three hits apiece. Michael Young & Omar Vizquel each had two.
Darren O’Day & CJ Wilson followed up with scoreless innings. Really liking O’Day.
We did it, we came out of the Yankees/Red Sox road trip with a 3-3 record. Not bad at all. Obviously you want to go 6-0, but realistically that’s not happening. I think most everyone is satisfied with 3-3 against those guys. Shows we can hang, which might be useful if this first place thing carries us into October.
Sorry for the brevity – it’s 3AM, and I’m tired. :)

Wow. There’s not much to say about this one. Jon Lester was freakin’ fantastic! I’ve seen many good games pitched in my years watching baseball, but Lester on June 6, 2009 was one of the best. Through the first six, he was untouchable. I mean it was stupid how badly he made the Rangers hitters look.

Michael Young finally broke it up in the top of the seventh when he had a good, clean, double to the monster in left. That was the only hit the Rangers got until Michael came up again in the ninth and singled. Our only run was a sac fly by Andruw Jones in the ninth, scoring Elvis Andrus.

Yeah, the Sox scored a bunch of runs, Derek Holland and Mr. Anna Benson didn’t look that good, but who cares? This was about Jon Lester. Once the game got through the sixth, I wanted to see him throw a perfect game against the Rangers – that would have been quite something to watch, and I think most people at that time were thinking he could.

After going 1-2 in the Bronx, I don’t think anyone was looking forward to Boston too much, because you could quite easily see another repeat of a 1-2 series, to come home 2-4. We’d then hear all the pundits (Randy Galloway mostly) whine about how we couldn’t beat the good teams. They’d have a point mind to some extent, mind you, but I wouldn’t want to hear all of that.
So with some trepidation (and no HD feed) on Friday night I sat down to watch the Rangers take on Boston. Kevin Millwood was taking on Brad Penny. Penny’s OK, but not someone to be totally afraid of. And the Rangers weren’t. At least not right away. This was a pretty good pitcher’s duel through the first four innings. Neither team could get past the zeroes that the starters were putting up.
Until the fifth. The Rangers hit Penny for several runs, (five in all), after a play that Julio Lugo probably should have gotten to. Had he done that, I expect that most of the runs that inning would have never scored. I’m speaking of the three run home run that Ian Kinsler got shortly after Lugo’s missed play (which had a visual response from Penny on the mound). The Rangers plated four in the top of the fifth, and that was pretty much all they needed, despite tacking on an additional run in the sixth. That was it from us scoring wise, we were up 5-0 after six. We actually didn’t have a ton of offense. Just eight hits in all, three of them by Chris Davis, who seems to be getting more hits, even if he’s still striking out way too many times. There was also two hits by Marlon Byrd, and one each by Kinsler (his HR), Saltamacchia, & Andrus. One Davis’ hits was a double, but everything else aside from Kinsler’s homer was a single. So the fifth was well timed.
Turns out we didn’t need all of them anyway. Kevin Millwood was pretty good yet again, going seven innings (plus three batters in the 8th) on 117 pitches. Seven hits and four walks, but allowed just one unearned run. We had no double plays, so this was a case of Millwood getting out of it himself. He really deserves more than 5 wins at this point. He’s been way better than his record indicates.
One down, all we need is one more of the remaining two games and we’ll have a 3-3 road trip. :)

As has been my policy for the last few years, I don’t write about losses to the Yankees.
However, I will say this. It was very cool to see Nelson Cruz’ dad in the stands getting quite excited about his son’s home runs. They need to bring him to every game, and make him a staple like they do with the old guy in the hat from Seattle. :)

The Rangers took a page out of the Yankees’ old playbook this night. That’s run up the count on the starting pitcher, and get him out of there.
Andy Pettite started for the Yankees, and was out after five innings, and 104 pitches. In fact, the Rangers scored all their runs off of Andy. He was not his classic self, giving up seven hits and an astounding six walks in five innings for those four runs. Did strike out six, though – otherwise it probably would have been a lot worse. It’s a good thing the Rangers got to Pettite, because they couldn’t get anything done against the bullpen.
The same went for the Rangers’ bullpen – they didn’t give up any runs at all, and the ones the Yankees did get were pretty few anyway. Scott Feldman started, and is looking better and better each time he pitches. 6.1 innings, five hits, three walks, and five strikeouts for those two runs the Yankees got. The second run was a solo home run by Jorge Posada in the final inning Feldman pitched, so he was quite good the whole night. Couple of double plays helped out Scott, too.
The Rangers offense was all singles, although Elvis Andrus stole two bases; Kinsler was caught stealing, too. Kinsler was also picked off first, too. That’s always embarrassing.
It’s always nice to beat the Yankees, but I was disappointed none of the three games from the Bronx were in HD. You’d think at least one of them would be to show off the new stadium. I was kind of disappointed by that.

As has been my policy for the last few years, I don’t write about losses to the Yankees.

Taking a mulligan again as my son came home from the hospital with momma on Sunday. :)