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The best picture from the game:

First off, I want to shamelessly steal this line from the MLB.com Texas Rangers specific game recap from this one. When I read it, it’s pretty true. The article said, “This was the perfect get-well card for Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo, who underwent knee replacement surgery on Friday in Dallas.“. Have to agree with that.

Secondly, it’s probably time to make more complaints about late games. I was watching this game, enjoying it until my wife came out to tell me she was going to sleep, and apparently I had fallen asleep on the sofa somewhere in the fifth or sixth innings. Woke me up in the top of the seventh, so I backed up the game (yay TiVo), and started watching. Well, apparently I was more tired than I realized, as I fell asleep again, only this time it was in the bottom of the eighth. I decided I was just going to go to bed, and stopped the recording, and well, went to bed. I get up this morning, sit at the dining room table with the paper and my coffee, and see the eight spot in the top of the ninth! DAMMIT! I missed it, both because I gave up and went to bed during the bottom of the 8th, and secondly because I stopped my TiVo from recording. I tried undeleting it on Saturday morning, but then I realized I had stopped it recording when I went to bed, which I almost never do. DAMMIT AGAIN! When I told all this to my wife, who was getting ready for work at the time, she said “Wow – that’s so not like you to miss it due to canceling a recording!” We need to get to the Central, and if we have to give up Hicks’ precious regular series against the Astros to do it, then I say go for it. I’m tired of falling asleep on the sofa during all our division games! OK, enough of that. Let’s get to the game.

Vicente Padilla took the hill, and most Rangers fans wondered which one we’d get. The good one from the first part of the season, or the one that seemed tentative and hurt his last two starts before the break. While his line won’t show it, we got the good one. You see, Vicente’s line shows six innings pitched, seven hits, four walks, and FIVE earned runs. He also struck out nine, which I believe is a season high for him. But the five earned runs all came in the same inning – the bottom of the third. The events of the game showed that the runs probably could have been unearned, but they were on the ledger of Padilla. Even the official transcripts and box scores don’t show anything that would have led you to think they should have been, but that’s how the game is played. Actually, it would have been worse, but David Murphy made a great throw, gunning down Hannahan at the plate for the final out of the inning.

Thing is, the Rangers responded in the next inning with a five spot of their own to tie the game. The first batter of the inning reached on a throwing error, which DID lead to unearned runs. Unlike Padilla, Oakland’s starter Sean Gallagher was the “beneficiary” of four unearned runs. Still, the inning was powered by the long ball. After Byrd reached on the error, David Murphy jacked a ball over the left center field power alley wall for a two run shot. After a single (Davis), awalk (Salty), and a bunt (Kinsler), Michael Young sac flied in the third run of the inning. Josh Hamilton followed with a home run to right field, tying the game at 5. It was also Hamilton’s 99th and 100th RBI’s of the season. Quite impressive numbers.

Vicente Padilla must have been energized by that, because he retired the remaining nine batters he faced in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings combined. Was quite the turnaround. Yeah, his third wasn’t too great, but he closed out his performance QUITE strongly to earn his 12th win of the season. There’s been a lot of talk this past week or so as to whether the Rangers would move Padilla. Given his overall turnaround, I find it hard to believe we’d give up our leader in wins, because Scott Feldman aside, we don’t really appear to have someone who can cover that slot in the starting rotation.

The Rangers pushed across the tying run in the top of the 7th when Chris Davis doubled, and was later singled in by Ian Kinsler. The Rangers never looked back at that point. Frank Francisco came in and threw a perfect bottom of the seventh. Eddie Guardado pitched a scoreless bottom of the eighth, and was I believe the last thing I saw before I went to bed. In fact, as I type this, I now recall seeing the double play to end the bottom of the 8th where Kinsler turned it on a slightly bad hop. That’s when I stopped watching. Go figure. CJ Wilson started warming up here, and never came into the game.

That’s because the Rangers exploded in the top of the ninth inning when I (and a lot of other fans probably) had fallen asleep. While an eight run frame means offense all over the place, the highlights was another Chris Davis home run. It was one of those innings (from reading the play by play account) where there weren’t a lot of big moments, it was a ton of small stuff. Here, you read it:

Rangers 9th (Rangers 14, Athletics 5) — Pitcher Change: A. Embree replaces B. Ziegler. M. Byrd grounds out, M. Ellis to J. Hannahan. D. Murphy singles to first base. C. Davis hits a home run to right field on a 2-2 pitch, D. Murphy scores. J. Saltalamacchia singles to right-center field. I. Kinsler walks, J. Saltalamacchia to 2nd. Pitcher Change: A. Brown replaces A. Embree. M. Young hits a ground rule double to center field, J. Saltalamacchia scores; I. Kinsler to 3rd. A. Brown intentionally walks J. Hamilton. With M. Bradley batting, passed ball by K. Suzuki, I. Kinsler scores; M. Young to 3rd; J. Hamilton to 2nd. M. Bradley walks. H. Blalock singles to left-center field, M. Young scores; J. Hamilton scores; M. Bradley to 2nd. M. Byrd doubles to right-center field, M. Bradley scores; H. Blalock to 3rd. D. Murphy grounds out to J. Hannahan, H. Blalock scores; M. Byrd to 3rd. C. Davis grounds out, B. Crosby to J. Hannahan. (8 Runs, 6 Hits, 0 Errors, 1 LOB)

Nice to see the Rangers win the game, something we have had issues doing this season for any sort of stretch of time. While it feels like we’re pretty much out of the running for the divison (we’re 10.5 games back), I also don’t feel we’re bound for the playoffs, but this has turned out to be a decent season because of all the kids we’re playing.
I wonder who we’re moving before this coming Thursday. Laird or Saltamacchia? Padilla? Catalanotto? We’ll see soon enough.
Speaking of “seeing”, Saturday’s game is one of those two mutant games in the schedule where it is not on TV here in the Metroplex. For the longest time, we’ve had 162 games on the TV, and I think about 3 years ago or so, we started having about 160. What’s the deal with the last two?

P.S. After I wrote all that, I realized I forgot to mention that this win put the Rangers in second place, passing the A’s. If we win either Saturday or Sunday (preferably both), we’ll retain second place when the series is over. This is a good thing. While I’m pretty convinced we’re not making the playoffs, I think second place is a good goal for 2008.

I was so busy with work today, I didn’t even realize the game was on. By the time I did realize it, it was 4:30, and the game was already over. From the looks of things I missed some heartbreak.
Oh well, I think I’ll skip writing about this one.

There’s not much positive to say about this game.
1) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
2) Our starting pitching stunk. Luis Mendoza gave up six earned runs on nine hits and two walks (and a home run). Dustin Nippert was no better, giving up four runs on three hits and three walks (and a grand slam). Bleargh. See what I mean from the report from the last game?
Yes I realize that’s the same thing twice, but I thought they stunk so bad, it was worth pointing it out twice.
Actually, the big positive was Chris Davis. Having recently been granted the first baseman’s job by Ron Washington, he paid that back with a great night. Chris went 3-4 with a home run. Milton Bradley was also 2-4, but that’s about it for the positive in this game (does Blalock’s triple count?)

Scott Feldman has probably been our second most consistent starting pitcher this season, behind I’d say Vicente Padilla. So what do you do with a guy like that in the second half? Put him in the bullpen. There was some talk during the All Star break that Feldman would be going to the pen in the second half. The stated reason is one that’s hard to argue with, I suppose. He’s apparently either at, or about to pass his largest number of innings pitched in his career, I think they’re trying to protect him. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but don’t pitchers get stretched out in that regard by being pitched, and not protected? I guess it’s only a mild complaint, but when you get performances like we got this game, you don’t want him in the pen.
Scott Feldman tossed six innings, and allowed just one run on four hits. Had three walks, which isn’t great, but there were three double plays turned behind Scott. The pen was quite good too. Three guys followed Scott (Francisco, Guardado, Wright), and between them there was just one hit allowed (Guardado). Great pitching performance. It’s too bad they can’t be consistent for a great length of time – look at our last dozen or so scores, they’re not consistently showing this great pitching game after game.
Offensively, it’s a tale of home runs. Five of our six home runs were accounted for by the longball. Classic Texas Rangers offense. There was a three run shot by Josh Hamilton in the third inning, and there was a two run shot by Hank Blalock in the eighth, his first home run in bloody ages. Given we had six runs, we didn’t have a ton of hits (just eight). Half of them were doubles, though, so we had four doubles, two home runs, and two singles.
Was a nice win, and nice to see Blalock get back on the HR chart. Probably should savor those, as I can’t imagine he’ll be a Ranger come 2009.

That headline is really unfair to Vicente Padilla, Eddie Guardado, & CJ Wilson, but I think most people will remember Taylor Teagarden most in this game.

Heck, Taylor got his first caught stealing throw in the majors. He got his first major league hit, which also happened to be a home run. Said home run was also the lone run in this game, and broke up a perfect game bid at the time by Minnesota starter Scott Baker. How cool was all that? It was quite a moment, and he didn’t visibly smile enough for my tastes. :)

Baker certainly personified the concept of “hard luck loss” in this one – no doubt.

This looked like the Vicente Padilla we’ve been seeing all season – going after guys, and not nibbling. His last two outings before this one were the ones where he was presumably hurt, and it’s nice to see him bounce back to his old 2008 self when coming off the DL. Hopefully he stays that way.

Despite the win, I’m a bit surprised at how underwhelming our offense was in this series in Minnesota. For all three games COMBINED we had a total of just three runs (one was zero, too) and eleven hits. Blech. It’s like we went to sleep. That was a horrendous performance. If it wasn’t for our pitching on Sunday, we would have been swept out of Minnesota, and quite frankly, the way we were hitting, we probably deserved that.

Having said all of that, it was quite nice to see Taylor Teagarden have such a cool day. Makes you wonder if that’s it for him for awhile, given our catcher heavy situation right now.

Ugh. The only good moment of this game was Chris Davis’ home run.
I know it’s only two games out of the break, but after last night and tonight combined, does anyone else feel like it’s April again?

First off, I wanted to make a comment about the MLB Game Recap for this game. For the last few seasons, I’ve been linking to the recaps on the official mlb site. This year they’ve gotten a lot better, with video and pictures, and recaps from both sides. They’ve been a serious improvement. There’s technically three recaps for each game. The ones that are slanted for the home and visiting team comprise two, and then there’s a third that covers the “general MLB recap”, which also includes the other two. Anyway, for the general MLB one, someone is writing what I would perceive as “comedic headlines”, where it’s things like “Texas Two Step stops such and such team”. But the one for this game really struck me as odd, mostly because it seems bizarre. The phrase was “Perky pitching powers three-hit derby”. Perky? Perky? What exactly is “perky pitching”? That really seems odd to me.
Thing is, this little diatribe I wrote about the word “perky” is more than what can really be said about the actual game. I think most Rangers fans were riding high off of Josh Hamilton’s HR Derby performance. Ian Kinsler’s 25 game hitting streak was ready to be extended, and most Rangers fans I think were feeling good about the team. Unfortunately, we ran into Twins pitcher Glen Perkins. He tossed a gem against the Rangers, going six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits. Those hits were a double (Byrd), and two singles (Young, Bradley). Perkins only went six innings and 98 pitches, though. I thought he probably could have gone longer, but you can’t argue that he would have done better than the bullpen guys who followed. The three Twins relievers each pitched a single perfect inning. You can’t beat that.
Millwood was not good. 6.1 innings, eleven hits, one walk for five earned runs. Bleh.
But the bottom line was the Twins pitching shut us down totally, and handed us our first shutout of the season. Hats off to Perkins and crew for a well pitched game.