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Jason Jennings bounced back, had a decent outing on Saturday against the Red Sox. Gave up just two runs in six innings. Unfortunately, Joaquin Benoit blew it late and gave up a home run to Manny Ramirez, giving the Sox the win.
Dammit.

That picture pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? As a habitual nail biter myself, I can understand Gerald Laird’s doing so here.
This game was a mess. Of course, the big blast was David Ortiz’ grand slam in the third inning. Mendoza’s outing really hurt the overall team pitching. TR Sullivan said it very well, with this:

Mendoza gave up seven runs in all, as his ERA went from 1.80 in his first two starts to 9.00. The Rangers’ rotation ERA also went up from 3.65 — third best in the league — to 4.18.

Ugh – ugh – UGH! To add to the lovely overall performance, we had another error, this time by the guy wearing Rusty Greer’s old number; Jason Botts. All three Rangers pitchers (Mendoza, Rupe, Nippert) gave up runs, although one of Nippert’s was a result of Botts’ error.

Rangers batters had only six hits overall. Only one was a single. Four doubles and a home run. The home run was Hank Blalock’s, and the swing reminded me of that home run he had in Chicago a few years back in the All Star game. It looked nice.

In all a pretty craptacular performance by the Rangers out there.

Given this Wednesday was my daughter’s birthday, and my mother was in town this week for the event, I didn’t spend much time thinking about the Rangers outside the time I watched the games, so I tuned in for this one, and saw Roy Halladay, and got bummed. He dominated us last week, and generally it’s hard to beat a pitcher like that. But, as the saying goes, that’s why you play the games.

The Rangers started by making a few roster moves, and rested some guys. Michael Young did not play, nor did Hank Blalock. Playing short was swiss army knife (thanks Josh) Ramon Vazquez. Playing third was a kid making his major league debut, German Duran. A few other roster moves had to be made to make room for Duran, as he wasn’t on the 40 man roster, either. The 40 man roster was to move Thomas Diamond to the 60 day disabled list, and the 25 man move was to put Marlon Byrd on the 15 day DL. I don’t recall much being said about Byrd being hurt, I wonder if this is one of those fake DL moves or not. Anyway, watching Duran at the plate against Halladay was somewhat painful. Felt bad for the kid, as he was up three times, and struck out three times. He also looked like a kid. He was born after I graduated high school (June 1983), which is becoming a far more common occurrence. Still, it probably was a major thrill for the kid, which was cool to see. For some reason, seeing kids make their major league debut continues to be something fun to watch. Haven’t gotten THAT jaded about the game yet. ;)

Vicente Pidente took the hill for the Rangers, and followed up the previous game’s performance by Kason Gabbard with one of his own. Vicente went seven innings, giving up seven hits, three walks, but most importantly just a single run. Jamey Wright and CJ Wilson followed up with scoreless frames of their own, sealing the win. But Pidente looked pretty darned good, and I’m wondering if all the talk about him being a different player in the spring is true. He’s now 2-1 with a 3.12 ERA. Pretty decent numbers for the first couple of weeks of the season. Extrapolated over the whole season, that’s 24 wins. That’s probably dreaming, but it’s a great start, I hope it continues.

David Murphy had three doubles in this game. Too bad some of them couldn’t have come in the previous game when we had 6,334 men left on base. Still, three doubles against a Cy Young pitcher is nothing dismiss too lightly. Murphy was the only Rangers batter to get anything other than a single against Halladay.

Josh Hamilton’s monster home run power hasn’t shown up yet, but he continues to hit the ball hard, no matter what he does (single, pop up, or foul). When that light goes on, I wonder if we’ll start hearing talk about the old “Hit it here – win a suit” sign that used to be on top of the scoreboard in right field at our park. You think if all the planets align right, he probably COULD do that. Or, he could hit one into one of the hotel rooms in Toronto, too.

Come on Josh, “Hit it here!”

In a game that took four hours and fifty three minutes, the Rangers finally prevailed, and got back in the win column. But not for a lack of trying to give the game to the Jays. Jack Benoit had a bad outing, giving up three runs (only two earned – uh oh, another error!) in his one third of an inning of work. Oddly enough, Benoit was credited with a hold. His successor on the hill (Wes Littleton) was charged with the blown save, despite not giving up any actual runs of his own. I mean I know WHY this happened, it just seems odd. That’s all.
Kason Gabbard started the game, and pitched well. I thought he deserved the win, actually. Six innings, seven hits (OK, a few too many), and two walks. But only two runs, which was the important part. This felt like the first week of the season again. Not the sharpest pitching outing, but certainly effective, and enough where he should have gotten the win.
Toronto burned through their entire pitching staff (save for the other starters), I believe, including finishing up with AJ Burnett which threw the final inning.
When you have a 14 inning game, you get some weird stat lines. One of the weirdest is Milton Bradley, who shows as going just 2 for 3, but with FIVE walks. Michael Young was 2-8, and Josh Hamilton was 4-7. Some weird sounding numbers there. :)
We had seven doubles in all (Catalanotto, Bradley, Botts, Hamilton, & Young), with two of the guys (Catalanotto & Hamilton) getting two each. Jason Botts finally broke through for his first hit of the season; a solo home run in the fourth. Frank Catalanotto also had a home run, he had a good day overall (3-7 with three runs scored, and an RBI).
Unfortunately, our men left on base problem continues unabated. The team left a total of NINETEEN men on base. Granted, it was a 14 inning game which helped that number a bit, but even if take out the average of that for the extra innings, we still left over a dozen men on base. That’s not good at all. The individual left on base numbers were downright nauseating. There were FOURTY ONE men left on base by individual batters. The worst one was David Murphy, whose numbers were 11 in that department. Ugh.
This night’s entry in the Bad News Bears Rangers fielding clinic was Ben Broussard, who had a throwing error.

I know it’s way too early for this kind of serious depression about my baseball team, but after listening today, all I can think of is the picture below. It feels that way for some reason.
Also, anyone listening to the game catch the irritation in Victor Rojas’ voice? He was (as was everyone) astounded at the play that left Marlon Byrd at third when he should have scored, putting the runner behind him into a rundown and an out. But when they went to commercial, Rojas sounded positively disgusted. Reminded me of the time that Tom Grieve swore at Hideki Irabu a few years back when his mike was not closed like he thought it was.
Anyway, tell me if you think this picture is how you feel at the moment.

The feel good feeling of the first time through the rotation in the 2008 season is gone, replaced by a sinking feeling when you see how sloppy we’re playing in the field, and how inept we are with runners in scoring position. The play from the other day when Byrd led off with a triple, and was stranded there is still particularly annoying.
Last night’s game had yet another error for the pile for the 2008 Rangers. Where the heck is all this coming from? We were a much better fielding team than this the last few years. Our general core of players is the same, so why are we fielding like the Bad News Bears? No, I don’t want to hear it from Randy Galloway, either. Yeah, platitudes like “it will come around” are heard about now, but I don’t want to hear that EITHER. I want them to be fielding like they should be – RIGHT NOW.
I think Jason Jennings thought he was wearing an Astros uniform last night, as he certainly pitched like the 2007 vintage. BAD! 4.2 innings, seven hits, four walks, seven runs (six earned). With performances like that no wonder our attendance last night was 16,541. When the game started, I noticed the TV coverage is not showing a lot of shots of the park anymore. I wonder if that’s intentional – because the one shot we saw of the upper deck taken from a camera on Green’s Hill showed an almost empty upper deck five minutes before the start of the game. It was quite embarrassing.
Positives were Hank Blalock’s home run – that looked really good. Milton Bradley has definitely changed my mind about his signing – he’s doing very well getting on base. Our bullpen was pretty good – 4.1 innings of shutout ball.
But Good Lord man, we’re playing like crap at the moment. I’m already at the point where I’m skipping large sections of the game via TiVo, because it’s painful to sit through all the pitches watching the team.
NOT a good feeling to have on April 15th.

Our inability to hit with men in scoring position really made me mad yesterday.
We could have tied the game in the bottom of the 10th. Marlon Byrd led off the inning with a triple. A friggin TRIPLE no less. He was stranded there, and we lost.
Got too mad at this one to want to write about it.