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I missed most of this game due to family events. Building a block building with my little girl seemed more important than watching the Rangers game tonight. But still, I’m a Ranger fan, so I had to say something about the game after checking out the box score.
The Rangers scored early, putting three on the board in the first two innings. This was powered by a Nelson Cruz triple (scoring Cat), and an Ian Kinsler single (scoring Vazquez & Laird). Unfortunately, this was offset by another pedestrian opening by Kevin Millwood, who allowed three runs to the Blue Jays in the first inning (single, walk, single, double). Kevin’s overall line wasn’t too awful – those were the only runs he gave up. However, too few innings (four), too many hits (eight), and WAY WAY WAY too many pitches (96) combined to kick Kevin out after the fourth. We only used one other pitcher this evening (Jamey Wright), who also went four innings, and gave up three runs to Toronto in the sixth.
Jamey’s appearance in relief will keep him from starting on Saturday. Instead, we’re calling up Mike Wood from AAA to start in place of Kameron Loe who is going on the DL with some back pain (although it doesn’t seem serious from reading about it). Nothing terribly bad here, but I have a “meh” feeling about it.
Offensively, we had one triple (Byrd), and eight singles scattered around the game. Halladay went 6, giving up four earned runs. Not exactly Cy Young caliber stuff, but it was enough to beat us this Friday evening.

Jake Westbrook got his second win of the season. On August 2nd. Against us. Figures. It was his 13th start of the season, and only his second win. He pitched like he was Roy Oswalt, which he is most definitely not. That’s usually when pitchers do things like that. Westbrook was pretty much in control, going six innings, giving up 5 hits and one walk and five strikeouts. No runs, obviously. Pitch count was a bit high, 103, but it didn’t matter. Cleveland’s relievers went 3 innings, two hits, no runs. We were shut out.

The Rangers had seven hits in all (including two doubles (Young, Botts)), and that’s usually enough to push across a run or two, but we couldn’t do that. Was pretty much an ineffective offense today.

Kason Gabbard made his Rangers debut today, and wasn’t that bad. He went 5.2 innings, gave up 3 earned runs on eight hits and one walk. Struck out four. It was cool to hear that outside the strikeouts, his outs were all on the ground except one fly ball. Shortly before Gabbard came out, Eric Nadel uttered the phrase “Jason Gabbard has been a ground ball machine today.” That will be good in Arlington. Makes you wonder what we’ll do when Vicente Pidente comes off the DL. Almost makes you wish we hadn’t have signed him, eh? Still, Gabbard was pretty good, if not great today, so it’s something good to build on, I would think.

And finally, I wanted to have a mini rant about the KRLD post game call in show. The first 3-4 callers to Mike Ogulnick are prime reasons why I don’t like listening to call in shows. The guys who said “we’ve been in a rebuilding mode since 72” & “we’re the AAA team for the rest of MLB” are exactly what I mean by short sighted, knee-jerk “fans”. When you say silly things like that, it completely discounts everything else you say, and make someone who really knows baseball want to shut off the radio (which I did). I ranted about this the other day about the Teixeira trade, and I won’t go into a full rant here, but dammit – where’s Steve Busby when you need him? Ogulnick wants to be everyone’s friend. Come on man, call some of these people morons like Busby used to!

First off, my TiVo did not record the game tonight. That was a bit of a bummer. I had spent the early evening playing some more of “The Bigs” on my Xbox 360, and then was going to check out the game, as I wanted to see Saltamacchia, and catch a glimpse of Gabbard, but to no avail. I did get to see Salt’s RBI hit on Baseball Tonight as I was flipping back and forth between that and coverage of the Minnesota bridge collapse.
I did see that we won 9-6 in extra innings, which is a surprise, as we usually seem to lose 10 inning games. I did get to hear the first inning on the radio at work while I was waiting for my ride home to show up, she was delayed due to the big storms in the area then. Really felt like we were going to get out to an enormous lead in the first inning. Paul Byrd was all over the place, and allowed 4 of the first 5 batters on, which scored a run. Jarrod Saltamacchia came through in his first at bat as a Ranger, he singled in two runs in the first, making it 3-0 early.
However, John Rheinecker gave it all back and then some with a four spot in the bottom of the second behind a single, a double, and two home runs. Cleveland though decided to help out by gifting us a tie again in the top of the third on a Garko error.
Things stayed calm for a little while until the bottom of the fifth when Rheinecker was knocked out following a Garko single/RBI and a Travis Hafner double/RBI. That made Rhein’s line 4.1 innings, 8 hits, 6 runs, 2 walks. Ugh. That was the bad Rheinecker. You know, I don’t have any good reason to do it, but I wanted to say “Rhein’s line” again. I amused myself typing that. :)
Our bullpen was outstanding again. Five relievers (Eyre, Littleton, Murray, Benoit, Wilson) combined to go 5.2 innings of shutout ball. Combined they allowed just three hits, NO WALKS, and seven strikeouts. Would have liked to have seen that – darn TiVo.
Frank Catalanotto (now one of the elder statesmen on this team) doubled in a couple of runs in the top of the 8th again, tying the game up, and sending it to extra innings where I don’t like being – we always seem to lose. Especially if it’s JUST ten innings. Give me 14 or 17 or something, then we win, but 10 is bad.
In the 10th, it seemed like Cleveland was a mess from looking at the play by play log. Vazquez single, Cat fielder’s choice (no out), Kinsler reaches on throwing error (Vazquez scores), Young intentionally walked, Botts hit a sac fly (Cat scored), Byrd singled (Kinsler scored), Cruz struck out. It was enough.
But the bits that most Ranger fans wanted to know about…
Nelson Cruz: 2-5, 1 run scored
Jarrod Saltamacchia: 1-5, 2 RBI
Jason Botts: 0-5, 1 RBI (sac fly), 3K
Sammy Sosa: 9 innings bench time
Kason Gabbard: Pitches tomorrow
Was weird seeing Teixeira hit a home run in Atlanta on Baseball Tonight. The Atlanta fans were having a love fest, but I bet you anything they’ll be wanting to run him out of town come October 2008.