You know, I was planning on writing how much I was enjoying this game, how I thought Eric Hurley deserved a better fate, and all that. But all I really WANT to do is post this image:
Yes, I know that’s Adam Hydzu & Akinori Otsuka up there, but I didn’t have a current picture of the bullpen like this. :)
G72: Rangers take opener against Braves at home, 7-5
The Atlanta Braves come to town. This is I believe their third trip to Texas, and yet the Phillies still haven’t been here. I know Interleague is not an exact science, but I would like to see some other teams besides the same one over and over again like that. Especially when we have realistically only two inbound NL teams. Yeah, yeah – we get three, but one is ALWAYS the Astros, so we have only two from the “rotating pool” of other NL teams.
Vicente Padilla continues to be good this season. This game was yet another in his great 2008 performances. Six innings, two hits, two walks, and two runs allowed, although just one was earned. One of the runs was a solo home run in the sixth – he looked pretty good, although not as crisp and dominating – at least not late. Early on he was, retiring the first 13 batters. Guess that does qualify as dominating, eh? :) The pen almost blew it late, but they did hang on for Pidente’s 9th win of the season.
Offensively, we got started early with an upper tank home run by Josh Hamilton. Was a serious no doubter – Tim Hudson looked like he got whiplash turning around so fast to see where it went. Marlon Byrd also had a home run in the sixth inning that went right into the wedgie. Milton Bradley went 1-2 with two RBI’s before having to come out of the game with a “mild” strain injury. They didn’t seem concerned, but with Bradley, you have to worry. He’s been a great surprise this season, but there’s always his health in the back of one’s mind.
Bradley was the only Ranger with more than one hit. Of the starters, only David Murphy & Michael Young went ofer – everyone else had a lone hit. Two were doubles (Kinsler, Cat), and the rest were singles. But this was all well placed, as we put a four spot on Tim Hudson in the third inning.
Nice to get the win. Although I have to admit I’m getting tired of saying “..back to .500”. I’ve said that way too many times this year. We need a winning streak.
G71: Rangers split DH, lose series with 4-2 loss
We were shut down by New York’s pitching. Michael Young & Josh Hamilton had RBI singles in the first and third innings, but that’s all we managed to push across the plate all game. Even one of those runs was unearned. Of our six overall hits, just one was an extra base hit (double by Cat). That was pretty much it.
Kason Gabbard was “meh”, although I didn’t think he was THAT awful. 5.2IP, 8H, 3BB, 4ER.
I have to say I don’t like watching pitchers bat. If we continue to have splits between AL & NL vs the DH, then we need to reverse it in interleague. Use the DH In NL towns, and make pitchers bat in AL parks.
G70: Rangers hang on with 8-7 win in Game 1 of DH
Boy, the Rangers really tried to give this one away, didn’t they?
Kevin Millwood came out, threw a good outing (6IP, 2R). Had too many walks (4 in 6 innings), but still got the job done. Only two runs allowed. Then Frank Francisco came in after an inning of scoreless relief by Jamey Wright. Francisco proceeded to stink up the joint worse than a Chan Ho Park outing. Just one out, gave up two hits, two walks, and allowed three earned runs to score. Well, some of them were “allowed” by Eddie Guardado, but you know what I mean. CJ Wilson got the save, and in true John Wetteland fashion, was all over the place, allowed a few runs to score, left guys on base – was so far from a clean save, it was’t funny.
We needed all the offense we got, plus a great defensive throw by Milton Bradley to gun out a Met at home plate turned out to be bigger than I think anyone thought it was at the time.
The Rangers were powered by three home runs (Vazquez, Kinsler, & Bradley). Bradley’s appeared to leave the park completely. Vazquez was the leader, going 3-4 with 4 RBI’s and two runs scored. Nice game for Ramon.
Ponson released
- P Sidney Ponson released
- P Thomas Diamond activated from the 60 day DL and optioned to AA Link ]
The State of Major League Baseball 2008
There’s a site I frequent quite often, it’s called “The Biz of Baseball” run by a fellow by the name of Maury Brown. If you are interested in the business dealings of the sport, it’s an invaluable site (even if you’re not interested, it’s just good reading). Anyway, in December of 2006, they ran an article called “32 Voices on the State of the Game“. It was an article with a sort of free flowing stream of consciousness from several completely different viewpoints. It was quite compelling. Well, they’ve done it again.
Out today is the next installment, entitled “The State of Major League Baseball 2008“. The odd thing (to me) about this entry is that I was asked to contribute to this new article. That was mind boggling to me, as I consider myself a small fry when it comes to things like this. But Maury persisted, said I was someone he definitely wanted a “a new voice that was a fan perspective”. So I sat down and wrote. If you’re familiar with this site, you know I can tend to “go off” on tangents, and just get mad at stuff. That’s kind of what I did in my piece. So check out the new article, not because I am in it, but because there’s a lot of good thoughts in there.
I still feel a bit “tingly” to be in the same piece with some heavyweights and big names like Chuck Armstrong (President, Seattle Mariners), Jerry Crasnick (ESPN Author), Jeff Erickson (Rotowire), Brent Gambill (Producer, XM Satellite Radio’s MLB Channel), Jeff Passan (Yahoo), and of course Ken Rosenthal (from everywhere). Thanks Maury!
Edit: After getting permission from Maury, here’s my piece from the full article.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
I’ll start off with a theft from Will Carroll. It comes from the first Voices entry of this series.
“Saying what’s right and wrong with the game is an exercise in hubris and futility.”
Will’s right. It’s hard to have a good, honest list as to what is right and what is wrong that covers everything, which everyone can agree with. Even if you could make the list, would you want to? The flaws are what make the game. Baseball is a confusing game to “figure out”. You think you have a handle on how it should be done, and then find out that you don’t. But as humans, we tend to complain about things first. Most of the complaints you hear about about baseball are “too expensive” or “steroids”.
The bigger complaint is about money, though. There’s lawsuits about statistics (who owns the numbers), so much advertising that the head spins, a cost of parking and gas that is more than tickets in some places, and the price of concessions? Ha! Heck, the mlb minimum salary ($390,000) is so far out of whack with the “real” minimum wage ($12,168, assuming 40 hr work week) that it’s mind boggling how far removed from reality MLB seems to be when you talk about money. Everything is about the “Baby Ruth Home Run Challenge”, or the “DHL Pregame show”, or the “Monster.com All Star ballot”, to things like whatever the name of the Giants park is this week, and all that. You could take up the space that all 30 of us are using to talk about corporate naming issues. Heck, I saw a McDonald’s logo ON THE PITCHER’S MOUND in PNC Park when looking at it in Google Maps. My kid’s bobbleheads have half a dozen logos on them, nothing can get out there without being sponsored. I’m surprised there aren’t some sort of logo inside the men’s urinals in the bathrooms – or on the hot dogs themselves! We have so much money floating around the game that if baseball gave a religious tithe like Jesus commanded, we could probably do away with a lot of poverty in places. Don’t even get me started on the extortion of cities that is building new stadiums.
On top of the things with money, then there are the things that are just confusing. For example, MLB made a major stink recently about how games are “too long”, and they want to shave some time off. I think I read where the average time is longer by a matter of single digit seconds. Not minutes, but seconds. So what comes out at the same time? The note that we will have instant replay for home run balls, and for balls by the foul pole. They make a major deal about games being too long, then add a time suck like instant replay. Want the games to move faster? Call the bloody strike zone the way it is defined in the rule book. There’s several rules that are already on the books that if actually ENFORCED would make the games go faster. Man, that’s just perplexing.
A lot is made of the fact that it’s a game meant for kids, but so many ancillary things around the game are things we have to “explain” to kids is a major hassle. As the parent of a three year old, I’m enjoying teaching my kid that a home run is not just when they “run” around the bases – they have to hit the ball over the fence. If I had to get into why Barry Bonds looks like a horse, or why she keeps hearing the words “performance enhancing”, I don’t know if I’d try to get my kid into baseball. There’s so much business around the game, that it almost doesn’t feel like it’s for “kids” anymore. We’re teaching kids to get ahead, get the biggest signing bonus there is, you’ll “strike it rich with Scott Boras”, etc, etc, etc.. That’s why I’m enjoying Josh Hamilton now. A man who has discovered God, and is not afraid to show it. Good for him. Oh, he’s not the only one, but he is a local one to me, so I hear about him the most. When you hear so much bad about the sport all the time in the media, it’s nice to hear something nice like that.
What is The state of baseball? The state of “baseball” is fine, despite all the negativity above. The sport is too good to kill, but if you’re reading the website this article will appear on, you probably know this already. The most vitriolic complainer will still love sitting out at the park watching the game. Baseball will sometimes go and do something very nice – like the recent Negro League player draft at the recent MLB draft. I enjoyed that moment a lot. So yeah, there’s good there, but there’s SO MUCH negative it feels that it’s hard to find the good (outside the actual game itself).
P.S. I would like the return of scheduled doubleheaders – heck, give me a tripleheader!
Tejeda DFA
- P Kason Gabbard recalled from AAA
- P Robinson Tejeda designated for assignment [ Link ]
Rangers and Mets rained out
The game between the Mets & Rangers was rained out. Came in from mowing the lawn tonight, and after a shower, sat down to watch the game. Puddles of rain in the outfield, and thanks to TiVo, I fast forwarded about an hour and a half and found out there was no game to be played.
Father’s day tomorrow, and a doubleheader! The only thing that would have made that better was if the doubleheader was in Arlington, and not in Flushing, NY.
G69: Rangers shut down by Oliver Perez, lose 7-1
The Rangers were a good example of good pitching vs good hitting. For seven innings, the Rangers were shut down by Oliver Perez and the Mets. He allowed just three hits, while striking out eight. The only two blemishes were a solo home run by Josh Hamilton in the first inning, a single by (of all people) Scott Feldman, and another single by Hamilton later in the game. That was IT! The Rangers had nothing going all night, our swings looked bad – Perez was on. Not a lot you can do against that.
Feldman looked OK for awhile, giving up three runs in the first five. But he ran out of gas (or the wheels fell off, or any other euphemism you want to put here) in the sixth, and allowed four more runs. In all, Scott allowed six earned runs, and one unearned run. Josh Rupe and Robinson Tejeda finished up the last three innings, giving up nothing, but the damage was done.
This was Oliver Perez’ game. Not much more to say about this one.
G68: Rangers can’t sweep anyone again, lose 6-5
We just can’t break out the brooms. Thought we had it in hand, but the Royals came back and beat us like we beat them the previous two games, although with not as many runs on the scoreboard. :)
It started off with the major league debut of Eric Hurley for the Rangers. Eric sounded like he was pretty decent. He got burnt by a few home run balls – all four runs Eric gave up were to the longball. For a major league debut, going six, giving up four on six hits and three strikeouts – but more importantly, no walks! All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good start. Assuming he stays in rotation, and isn’t sent back out again, his next opponent will likely be the Atlanta Braves back home, a slightly better hitting team than the Royals. Let’s see what happened.
Offensively, we were held to just seven hits, but they were efficient, as we pushed across five runs on them. KC didn’t help much, giving up just one walk all day. Michael Young took another ofer for the second game in a row, dropping his average below 300 again (to .299). Josh Hamilton was the only Ranger with more than one hit (two doubles), the other five were scattered, although two of them were back to back home runs by German Duran (three run) & Ian Kinsler (solo).
The game was lost by Frank Francisco, who gave up the tying and winning runs in the bottom of the eighth, losing it for Hurley. Oh well. On to Shea Stadium and the Mets.
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