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Another game by Kevin Millwood that was wasted by one of his teammates. This night it was an unusual source, it was Michael Young, who had three errors in the field. That’s highly unusual for him, he’s usually a rock. But three. Ewww… That had a lot to do with the two unearned runs that got charged to Kevin’s ledger. Take those away, and Kevin had a pretty decent night. 6.2 innings, only two earned runs (four in all). Bit too many hits (ten). Walks weren’t too bad (two), but no strikeouts. Pitch count was 110. Bill White finished the seventh, and Littleton pitched the 8th. In all the pitching wasn’t bad at all for Texas tonight.
The problem was the three errors by Michael Young. But even worse than that were the 13 men left on base. I don’t have an exact count by inning, since I didn’t score the game, but there were several innings late where we left men on base. We had bases loaded and one out in the sixth, and hit into a double play. We just couldn’t get the job finished offensively.
The best moment was probably that play where Nick Punto was thrown out at third. It was awesome. David Murphy picked up the ball that had stuck to the wall, tossed it to Ian Kinsler, who threw one of the most perfect relay throws I’ve ever seen. It was so perfectly thrown, that Travis Metcalf didn’t have to do anything, Nick Punto just slid into his glove, and he was out. It was quite spectacular. Ian Kinsler also made a great diving play in the game, but I think the Murphy to Kinsler to Metcalf outfield assist was a far cooler play.
Michael Young did get three hits, which gives him 190 for the season. He needs 10 hits in the final 11 games to get to 200. The way he’s hitting, it doesn’t seem like it will be a problem, but one never knows for sure.
Also, this was our 81st loss of the season. If we still want to finish at .500 we have to run the table, and go 11-0 to close out the season. That is unlikely to happen. :)

Our “closer by committee” committee blew a pretty decent start by Edinson Volquez, who looks like he may have gotten his act together. We have seen guys pitch well in September and then stink up the joint the following season, so I’m not getting too excited about that.
Still, it was a good outing. Volquez went six innings, gave up two runs (one earned) on five hits and one walk. Struck out six. A pretty decent outing there. Hate to waste those. Bill White came in and pitched a decent shutout frame. That’s when our closer committee blew it. CJ Wilson gave up a run in the eighth, and Joaquin Benoit gave up two, including the walk off winner. Granted, one of Benoit’s was an unearned run, but that didn’t much matter. It was a run; we lost. Speaking of losing, we’re three games behind Oakland for third place. Reachable for sure, but that “gut feeling” again tells me it won’t happen. Sigh.
Offensively, we were lead by Guillermo Quiroz & Travis Metcalf. Both had two hits and an RBI. Metcalf had a double and a home run, scoring twice. The rest of our offense was pretty scattered. Between the remainder of the players, there were three hits and one RBI (Young).
As a side note, is it just me, or does Bill White have that “Jim Morris feeling“? I know that is not the case, but it just “feels” that way to me, even though my brain says it’s not.
I thought about just posting “Sigh” and nothing else for this game, but given my mindset on Saturday, I wanted to end the season with some real commentary, and not the cop-out of a one word commentary. ;)

Well, I wasn’t in much of a mood to watch baseball for two reasons:

1. That “I want to stop” post I made on Saturday
2. Football was on.

Still, I tuned in to the beginning of the game as I was flipping channels. The Rangers didn’t do much in the top of the first inning, but they did in the bottom. Or at least Padilla did. Yeah, we won, but this was probably the moment most people will remember.

It’s of course not as famous as this fight picture…

Or even a good a fight as this one from last year…

But for some reason, fights on a baseball field always fire up the crowd. Most people seem to think “headhunters” or guys who have a reptuation for throwing at people are a bad thing. I disagree. I like that. These fans who were against this were obviously never fans of old school baseball. Back in the day, most people pitched that way. And the hitters either just took it or fought. There was no whining about rules, and this and that. It was part of the game. A part that’s been lost. You think Roger Clemens doesn’t do this? Of course he does. I like this. It’s not like Chan Ho Park, who hit people by accident. This is message baseball, something that we need more of.

As for the game itself, it was a big back and forth game. I did see the six run top of the second, which was cool to watch. I did not see the five run bottom of the third, which would have not been cool to watch, had I seen it. We traded singles in the fourth and fifth, and we went into the top of the 8th down one run.

Michael Young took care of that with a grand slam in the top of the eighth. I didn’t see that, either. Shame, but I was on football then. He came close to a cycle as well, missing the hardest one; the triple.

As is the case with a game that had 20 combined runs and 21 combined hits, there wasn’t much in the way of great pitching – the box score confirms that.

The Rangers lost this game to Oakland. It’s now their fifth loss in a row, and are now 4 games behind Oakland for escaping the basement in the AL West. Looks kinda bleak, doesn’t it?
The sad part is that TV didn’t even care. This game wasn’t broadcast in the Metroplex. I don’t understand that. There’s 162 games in the season. If we were one of these teams with crappy TV coverage like the Montreal Expos used to have where only a handful of games were on a season, I’d understand it. But not the Rangers. We either have 162 or close to it every year. I believe this was the only scheduled non TV game of the season. So what’s the deal with this one? Why was this date so special that it didn’t get on TV. We broadcast 161 other games (plus the 2 or 3 from Spring), so why not this last one? Doesn’t make any sense to me to schedule 161 of the 162 games. Someone please explain that to me.
Oh yeah, the game itself. After my post of earlier today, I’m not in the mood to write about game particulars.

I’ll make this short, because this game made me mad.
Their big inning (7) was better than our big inning (6), and that made the difference. Sigh.

We went into this series one game behind Oakland for third place. Lost the first two. Now down by three. If we lose one of the remaining two games, I say it’s done, we’re in the basement. Oh sure, mathematically we aren’t out, but that “gut feeling” says it’s over if we lose any more to Oakland this weekend, as Saturday and Sunday are the only games left against them directly all season.

As the season draws to a close, it’s getting hard to get motivated to write about games like this. I still like the team, and still care, but another season like this means that game numbers above say 135 are ones I’m less inclined to write about. Sometimes I’m tempted to go “Ah they lost. If you’re reading this, then you probably know why already anyway”. Still, I didn’t want to quit on the season, so I’ll have a few words to say:
Kevin Millwood started the game, and coming into this series, I felt good about our chances of passing Oakland and staying out of the basement. Early on though it didn’t seem like that was a possibility. We went down 2-0 in the first inning, and then 4-1 after three, and then 6-1 after five. Blech. Seen this story before. Rangers starter struggles, gives up a bunch of runs, team can’t come back. I’d expect that from youngsters, but not Kevin Millwood – a veteran. He just looked flat. 92 pitches in 4.2 innings, 8 hits, 3 walks, 6 earned runs. Very Mark Clark like. On the positive side, our bullpen didn’t give up any more in their 3.1 innings of work.
We did try and come back late though. After a mostly sleepy offense which generated just one run through six innings, we got some offense going in the seventh. Single, double, single resulted in the first run. Then Ian Kinsler was hit by a pitch, and Michael Young doubled home the other two runs. Was kind of a bang-bang sequence, not a long buildup of 10 pitch at bats and just singles. Kind of happened in a hurry, if you take out a pitching change in the middle.
But it wasn’t enough. It got us close, but the scoring was over at that point. Another loss. Sigh.

I didn’t see this game at all, as it was on during my bowling league night. There was a TV on about two lanes away from us, so I would peek at it, but it was so disjointed I can’t say I watched it at all. :) But from looking at the box score, this one can be summed up as..
Justin Verlander was better than Edinson Volquez. Of course that’s not a completely fair assessment, but I’d like one of our young pitchers to come up and get 17 wins in his first two full seasons as well – that always seems to happen to other teams, not us. Verlander pretty much shut us down for the game.
Michael Young got two hits. Needs 21 to get to 200. 16 games left. Better get a couple more multi hit games in a hurry. A 5-5 game would help too. :)
I’m going to let this one go without further comment, as there isn’t much else to say. We now head to Oakland for a four game series which very well could determine third place in our division – them or us. We’re one game behind them going in.