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With only 11 games played so far, a theme has cropped up. Something Rangers fans can relate to over time. The starting pitching stunk. AJ Murray was the stinker-du-jour today. Two innings, six hits, one walk, four earned runs. Kam Loe, who seems to be pitching himself down the pecking order in the last 12 months followed, going one inning, allowing two hits and two runs. That’s six of the nine the Pads got right there.
The only real offensive highlight for Texas was Kevin Mench’s three run home run in the seventh inning. That closed the Rangers scoring. We did have two other runs, but they both game on singles by Mike Young and John Mayberry, Jr. Ian Kinsler had a double, but that was it. Seven hits in all. One homer, one double, and five singles. Not a major offensive threat.
That’s mostly due to San Diego’s Greg Maddux & Wilfredo Ledezma. Between the two of them, they went six innings, allowing two runs and three hits (Ledezma also walked two). The big damage was against their third pitcher (Heath Bell).
Not much going on for the Rangers this Saturday. The loss drops us to 5-5-1 for the spring.

Jason Jennings was good. (2.2 IP, 1H, 0R)
Robinson Tejeda was not. (1IP, 2H, 3ER)
Travis Metcalf was good. (2-3 with run scored)
Josh Rupe was not. (0.2IP, 1H, 3BB, 3ER)
Josh Hamilton was good. (1-2, grand slam)
Jamey Wright was not. (1.2IP, 5H, 3R, 2ER)
Six straight Rangers reached base in the third inning. Very good.
Three Rangers wild pitches by three pitchers in this game. Not good.
Seeing my little girl play in the snow for the first time ever in the back yard – EXTREMELY good.
Brandon McCarthy and injury back in the press again. Not good. :(
I said I was going to continue that until I ran out of good things to say. I’m done. We lost, anyway. :)

As sloppy as Wednesday’s game was, Thursday’s was much better. Rangers pitching was the order of the day, not allowing any earned runs at all. The ChiSox did score once, but it was an unearned run on a Jason Ellison miscue.
Vicente Padilla started this one and went three innings, giving up just one hit, and two walks. Extrapolated over a full game, that’s six walks – too many, but for now, it’s OK. Full season box scores show you the number of pitches thrown. The spring box scores don’t seem to show that, so I can’t say how crisp he seemed from just reading the box score. But three innings with just one hit, and only one earned run is quite nice.
A followup to that was Scott Feldman, who also tossed three scoreless frames. Feldman had just one hit as well, allowing no runs, and one walk. Feldman also had seven ground outs vs NO flyouts. That’s great to see (Padilla was one grounder, and six flyouts). Feldman also faced just ten batters in his three innings of work; one over the minimum (the one hit). Bill White, Paul Kometami, & Elizardo Ramirez each followed with an inning of work. All three allowed no runs, and only Kometami allowed a single hit. Very nice pitching by the Rangers on this game. Something we’ll need a lot of of once the season gets going.
Offensively, we had the longball working. Got three of them this game (Travis Metcalf, David Murphy, & Chris Davis). John Mayberry Jr also chipped in with a double to round out the extra base hit portion of the offense.
If you look at the line score, we had a two spot in the second, and then lone runs in the 3rd, 5th, 8th, & 9th. With spread out scoring like that, you’d think our offense was also spread out, and you’d be right. Only Mayberry had more than one hit.
I’m encouraged by the performance so far by Vicente Padilla. By all accounts in the local press, he’s more friendly, in better shape, and trying a lot harder than before; he appears to be healthy. Which will be important, as we’re hearing the word injury more often than I’d like this spring. I always kinda liked Padilla when he was in Philly, and I could like him here too, but he seems to have become a victim of head games. I always kind of liked the throw at people mentality he has. Not that I want to INTENTIONALLY throw at people’s heads, but the fear of “will I get hit” can work for a pitcher. He just needs to learn how to get that fear into people without plunking 7 or 8 guys at once and starting brawls all the time (hello Anaheim).

This game from last Wednesday can be summed up in one word. Sloppy. The two teams combined for four errors and twenty seven hits for a total of eighteen runs. Not good. Fitting this mess happened on a day that my wife and I formally lost our second baby.
Ramon Vazquez had a good day for the Rangers, going 3-3 and scoring a run. Jason Ellison also went 2-2 and scored both times. Travis Metcalf had a solo home run, and Nate Gold drove in two runs. This was a day for singles, because of the fourteen Ranger hits only one was not a single (Metcalf’s HR). Overall, the hits were pretty spread out, there were a total of eleven different Rangers who had one.
Pitching wise, Matt Harrison had six hits and a walk in his 2.1 innings of work. Gave up five runs, but only three earned. Jonnny Poveda followed that with a stink job that was way up there on the Stink-O’-Meter. Only had one third of an inning pitched, and gave up three hits, three walks, and FOUR earned runs. Bleargh. Even Mark Clark wasn’t that bad. Speaking of sloppy, later on Jason Davis gave up three runs, but only one was earned. Of course we had five other pitchers who threw for Texas who didn’t give up any, but these numbers above are fairly sloppy.
A couple of former Rangers had decent days, too. Gabe Kapler went 1-2 with an RBI sac fly, as well as scoring a run, and another RBI as well. Laynce Nix, went 2-2 with a run scored and an RBI. Both of these guys are in camp with the Brewers on NRI’s – my guess is that neither breaks camp. Kapler was in attempting a comeback after having been out of ball for a short time – I wonder if he’ll play the minor league bounce around game, or go back to being a manager in the minors for the Red Sox.

Losses are never really that great. I know in my decade or so of doing this site I’ve said many a time “This wasn’t a bad loss”, but the bottom line is “you lost”. Still, having said that, only the first two pitchers were bad. The others weren’t.
Kason Gabbard stunk. Two innings, five hits, one walk, one home run. Four earned runs.
Kameron Loe stunk. 1.2 innings, four hits, one walk, two home runs. Four earned runs (five total).
The big shot for Arizona was the grand slam by Connor Jackson in the fourth inning, obviously.
That wasn’t good. The other pitchers we threw out there (Garr, Eric Hurley, Franklyn German, & Elizardo Ramirez) were good. Combined they went 5.1 innings, had just three hits (2 German, 1 Hurley), and only one walk (Ramirez). Eric Hurley was the best there, going three innings.
On the Diamondbacks side, we squared up against their Ace, Brandon Webb. Webb was hittable, but it is March, with a single digit number on the calendar, so there’s probably not a lot to make of that. He went three innings, gave up two runs on four hits.
Offensively, we were led by Michael Young’s first home run of the spring. That’s something that has disappered from Young’s game the last few years – the power numbers have fallen through the floor. Not that he’s ever really been a candidate for 35 home runs, but the 22 & 24 he had in 04 and 05 were what I think most people were expecting. Not the 14 and 9 he had in 06 and 07. Hopefully he can raise that up a bit, say get back to 20. I’d be happy with that.
Young was the only Ranger with multiple hits, the other 7 that were not off #10’s bat were all singles, except for a triple by Jason Botts.
I didn’t get to hear any of this game, as my wife and I have had a personal crisis in our life right now, and I’m only writing this on Wed morning during nervous time as we get ready to head to the hospital. I’ll have more on that later, but baseball isn’t the biggest thought in my mind right now. Far from it.

This was another one that I didn’t get to hear. It was being “webcast” on mlb.com, but didn’t use either SF or TEX broadcasters. That’s not normally a problem, but my wife and I were dealing with a family emergency most of today, and sitting in front of my computer to listen to a baseball game was not an option.

So I was enjoying it when I peeked in at the line score, and saw we were up 4-2 early. That’s always a nice thing to see. So imagine my surprise when I look further over and see that the Rangers have NO hits, and one Giants error. Oh boy, this ought to be interesting.

So I look down and see Noah Lowry pitching for the Giants. OK, not a world beater here, but definitely someone who has had some success at the major leagues. Holy CRAP! What is that line?

IP   H   R  ER  BB  SO  HR
SAN FRANCISCO
N Lowry                           1   0   4   4   9   0   0

What the heck? Nine walks in one inning pitched? NINE? Well, it turns out seven of them were in the first inning, and the other two were from when he went back out for the second (WTF!), and walked the first two guys. According to the box score, Lowry faced just 12 batters. Walked 9 of them. That’s gotta be some sort of record – that’s quite amazing. Now I didn’t see it, but one envisions Rick Ankiel’s pitching meltdown, only worse. This must have been a meltdown of epic proportions.
Anyway, SF’s pitching gave up a total of 15 walks in this game. That’s just NUTS. That’s more walks than actual hits the Rangers got (8). The Rangers actual bats were pretty scattered. Of the 8 hits, only Travis Metcalf had more than one (2); the other 6 were by 6 other Rangers.

The game score was a bit of a seesaw. We were gifted four runs in the top of the first, then gave up two in the bottom of the frame. SF put up two more in the fifth, tying it. Stayed that way until the top of the 8th, when we put up two more. However, SF scored twice in the bottom of the ninth, taking into extra innings. The Rangers then proceeded to score twice more in the 10th inning, winning it.

Despite all the walks by SF, they had a couple of guys who did pretty good. Valdez & Corria combined to relieve Lowry, going 5 innings combined, allowing no runs and just one hit apiece. Vinnie Chulk also threw a scoreless frame, but Steve Kline & Randy Messenger did NOT.

On the flip side, this was a mix of pitchers we know, pitchers that are just there, and guys I’ve never heard of before. Of the pitchers that have a realistic shot to be with us in April… AJ Murray was not great in his start. Gave up two hits and two walks in one inning. Just two runs as well. Jamey Wright looked good, putting in two innings of one hit, shutout ball. Robinon Tejeda stunk up the joint again, giving up 3 hits and a walk to combine for two earned runs. Most of the guys put up zeroes, except for minor league callover Tommy Hunter, who gave up 4 hits and 2 runs in his inning.

As I mentioned before, we weren’t that great offensively. Of the 8 hits we got, two were doubles (Murphy & Metcalf); the rest were all singles. We were gifted four runs via all walks in the first. Our RBI’s were fairly efficient too. Pedro Borbon had 2 & Travis Metcalf had 2. The other four RBI’s were scattered (and two of THEM were just sac flies).

Overall, you can’t argue with essentially a gift win, but it’s nice to see us in in the 10th, as opposed to the loss we usually get when the game goes just ten innings. :)