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I started listening to this game on my headphones. I had to mow the lawn. Since we bought our daughter a sandbox for her third birthday, I can’t let the grass in the back yard slide as much as I might have in the past, since she plays out there. Don’t want the fire ants to hide behind tall grass, eh? So I’m walking around the back yard listening to all the pre-game, as well as the start. The team made all the claims that last night was “behind us”, but you all know that Padilla will be on the mound, so you wonder if he’ll plunk someone – he’s pretty good at it. :)

Anyway, this game was quite good. Scott Feldman, who seems to be making some good first steps at becoming a starter took the hill for the Rangers. While it’s hard to judge how effective a pitcher is by listening to the radio sometimes, one gets the feeling that he was pretty decent. Obviously, his line spells that out, but I didn’t see how the pitches were moving, that kind of stuff. Speaking of Feldman’s line.. Six innings, two hits, four walks, but (something you probably already know) ZERO runs allowed. Feldman was followed up by Jamey Wright, Joaquin Benoit, & CJ Wilson. All of which threw a single frame of (again, scoreless) relief. This was Feldman’s first win of the year, and it continued in the line of great pitching we’ve received lately. This makes two great outings in a row for Scott. He was great in Oakland last Sunday as well when he got screwed over by a dropped ball – one of the “non error errors”.

When I was out mowing the lawn, Brandon Boggs took a dive into the left field wall, and from the sounds of it on the radio, he smacked his knee in a rather unfortunate place in the left field wall. As you can see in the picture above, there is a very small place where you could do this, so Brandon was unlucky in that he hit the really small spot. It knocked him down; he was on the ground for awhile, but stayed in the game. I did see the latter parts of the game on TV; they showed Brandon’s parents and sister (who seemed bored quite frankly, unlike his mom). I bet Mom was a bit freaked out during that.

Anyway, the following inning, Brandon erased any doubt over whether he was really hurt or not by jacking a home run into the left field seats for a 1-0 lead. This kid really has earned his spot, and I cannot see a reason why we’d send him back down now. With his emergence, did anyone see a regular outfield of Brandon Boggs, Josh Hamilton, & David Murphy at the start of the season? I didn’t. These guys are all doing very well. I rather hope they don’t try and shoehorn someone in (Cruz) to get at bats “or a look”. The guys out there now are doing great, and should stay there until they prove otherwise.

Boggs’ home run was all we really needed, but he didn’t stop there. Boggs had two other RBI’s when he doubled in the sixth inning, scoring Bradley & Hamilton. Boggs had a great line tonight – he went 3-4 with a run scored, and three RBI’s. Not bad when your parents are in the stands at all. :) The other run was driven in by league leading Josh Hamilton who went 2-4 this game.

It’s three shutouts in a row. It’s thirty one innings in a row of shutout ball by the staff. It’s quite a pitching feat, even more so that it’s from a team that is not known for this kind of stuff. Kevin Millwood goes on Saturday to see if the streak can be continued.

Richie Sexson is still gutless for throwing his helmet. Should have been more than six.

“That is a gutless, six foot seven, two hundred hitting. formerly good player – what a joke.”

This game started off with a lot of moves, and a little less than halfway through there were a lot of moves on the field. First off, the roster moves. Two guys were activated from the disabled list. One was tonight’s starter Kason Gabbard. The other was third baseman Travis Metcalf, who hadn’t yet appeared in a game this year. Metcalf didn’t really seem needed to me right now, as German Duran is doing a decent job over there, and we have Ramon Vazquez both to handle third till Blalock returns. However, with Ben Broussard being designated for assignment today, I guess you needed an infielder. Broussard other than the first couple of games of the season really hasn’t hit the ball at all. Nice enough guy, but man, he was just not getting it done. Additionally, A.J. Murray was sent back to AAA, but that’s no surprise, he was just up for a spot start.

Then the game started. Kason Gabbard started for us, and was looking pretty good. Gave up no runs, and just two hits. But unfortunately, he only went 3.2 innings (more on that later).
The game started off well, with Vazquez singling and both Hamilton and Bradley walking. A sac fly and a single later, the Rangers are up 2-0. Felix Hernandez (I still refuse to use his dumbass nickname) labored. I didn’t get a count, but he was around 30 pitches for the inning. Gabbard tossed up a donut on the scoreboard in the first. Gerald Laird was hit by a pitch, and then was driven in by a two run home run by Ian Kinsler. That was about it for the Rangers offense for awhile. In the fourth, Ian Kinsler was hit by a pitch. He wasn’t thrilled about it by his look at the plate, but didn’t do anything about it.

Then in the bottom of the fourth comes the head scratcher of the evening. Kason Gabbard threw a pitch up high, but over the plate. For some really unknown reason, Richie Sexson charged the mound. The pitch was easily a foot or more away from him – he ducked out of a pitch that if it was a foot lower would have been a strike. And he charged the mound. That was quite odd. Then to make it worse on himself (probably with the Commissioner’s league) he tossed his batting helmet at Gabbard before he got to the mound. Charging the mound is a suspension anyway, but throwing an object will probably make the penalty worse.

As he was charging the mound, Josh Lewin said “…with a helmet throw – COME ON!” In the replays of this and the discussion while the melee was going on, Tom Grieve came out with a comment that was right up there with his opinion on Hideki Irabu’s ability to pitch himself out of a paper bag. Grieve’s quote here that made me laugh out loud was:

“If he doesn’t get suspended for a week for that gutless move, I’ll be completely shocked. Number one; for charging the mound on a pitch that wasn’t even close, and then getting twenty feet away and throwing a helmet at him like a girl. What a joke.”

That made me laugh out loud. Another really good Grieve line from this was the one I started this article with. I actually thought of another word to use here, but it definitely isn’t a good one to use on a baseball blog like this one. All I’ll say about that is “meow”. Grieve’s comments made me get out the laptop and start writing this commentary before the game was over; something I don’t normally do. After the initial remark, there was the usual brawl milling around, and pushing and shoving happened. The only actual person who was ejected was Sexson – probably because there wasn’t any real fighting in the brawl outside of Sexson. What was interesting was the clip of Milton Bradley pushing Gerald Laird – about 3 or 4 times on camera, and with some force too. On one of them, I thought Bradley was going to push Laird down, actually.

Gabbard ended up coming out of the game shortly after that; early reports say it was about his leg, and not his back (which he was on the DL for). One never knows if it was directly related to Sexson, but that seems like the obvious response to the situation. Gabbard was followed up by Franklyn German, Jamey Wright, Eddie Guadardo, & Frank Francisco. These guys continued their pen dominance, and allowed squat. In fact, all those guys allowed just two hits.

In the sixth, we tacked on another run after a Gerald Laird double, and a Ramon Vazquez single. Speaking of Vazquez, he started in place of Michael Young tonight, and more than picked up the slack for Young. Vazquez went 4-5 with with an RBI and a run scored. A pretty good night for him. Brandon Boggs was 2-3 with a walk, showing no signs of giving up his spot to go back to AAA.

This was the first time the Rangers had back to back shutouts in four years.

With two shutouts in a row, plus going back into Tuesday night’s game, that’s a total of 22 innings in a row the Rangers have shut out the Mariners, and going further back, that’s just one run in the last 27 innings, and just one in the previous 32 (the M’s put up a four spot in the third on Monday’s game).

The one thing I don’t want to see is Tom Grieve back down from his comments. Stick to your guns, man. You were right. Don’t back off them. Don’t apologize.

This was an extremely well pitched game – on both sides of the field. The Rangers were going up against Eric Bedard, who for some reason seems to have had his reputation as a “Godlike” pitcher increased just because he was traded away from Baltimore. Now don’t get me wrong, he was a great pitcher in Baltimore, but does anyone else feel that the press is making him out to be better than he really is, merely because he wears a different uniform? Anyway, Bedard did pitch well, he went seven innings, gave up just six hits and two runs. Struck out five. A pretty decent outing.
Thing is, Vicente Padilla is pitching by far the best he’s ever done in a Rangers uniform – perhaps ever? He was fantastic – he went seven innings as well, but no runs and just two hits with eight strikeouts and two walks. On top of that, he was stupidly efficient with his pitches. Going into the seventh, he had thrown something like 60 pitches total. He had to work a bit in the seventh, but the first six were total cruise control. Even the seventh was something cool. Vicente’s two walks were both in the seventh. He started the inning with them. Then proceeded to strike out the side. He looked strong, he could have come back out for the eighth, I’m sure, but I understand the decision.
Also on Padilla, the way he just went after Seattle after the two walks in the seventh was really impressive. I’m going to shamelessley steal this bit from Joey M over at Baseball Time in Arlington, because he already wrote this better than I could. :)

And yet, it was Padilla’s seventh inning that really stole the show, if only because of the way he buckled down in the face of adversity. After walking Raul Ibanez and Adrian Beltre on back-to-back 3-2 pitches to lead off the frame (which prompted a predictable visit from pitching coach Mark Connor), Vicente went into overdrive:
92. 95. 94. Strikeout looking.
95. 96. 95. 95. 95. Strikeout looking.
96. 96. 97. 95. 96. 96. Strikeout swinging.
Dynamic. Singular. Electric. I’m not sure any one adjective can properly describe that 14-pitch sequence.

The two runs we got were both scored by Milton Bradley. One was in the fourth when Bradley scored on Brandon Boggs’ first career triple. The other was the sixth when Bradley jacked a home run ball into the Mariners’ bullpen. We had a chance to get some more in the latter innings, but didn’t come through.
The win now puts us in sole possession of third place. I really hope we win Thursday night, as I don’t want to leave Seattle tied for last place again. We’re now 15-20, and inching back to .500.
I also hope we win against the Red Wings, but I don’t see it happening.