Rangerfans.com

John Koronka did not pitch well. He gave up hits to 8 of the first 11 batters, and then, well – it was too late. Well, actually it wasn’t, but the game felt out of hand almost immediately. Especially when going up against someone like Jose Contreras.
We had 32 at bats, and only got 6 hits out of all that. Barajas had two hits, and nobody else had more than 1. Barajas did have a two run homer in the fifth to make the score 6-3 at the time, but even then the game never felt that close at all. Just felt like we lost the game in the first inning.
Koronka stunk up the joint, giving up 6ER on 9H with 3BB over 4.2IP. Ugh. Benoit also gave up 2ER in his 3IP. Bauer finished up with 1.1IP and didn’t give up any runs, but by that point it was all over.
It’d be nice to blame it on a lack of rest after the travel fiasco involved in getting out of Boston after a DH, but I wouldn’t actually believe that.

After the rain on Saturday, we actually played a doubleheader on Sunday. Given I have several games to update tonight I won’t write a lot about each.
Game 1: The early game started at 11AM, which means I didn’t see much of it. I was at church when the game started, and since I had something scheduled to do in the afternoon, I didn’t have the time to watch all of this game, in fact, I only saw less than an hour of this one. But this game can be boiled down to essentially two home runs. Kevin Mench jacked a two run home run ove the Monstah off Josh Beckett which broke a 2-2 tie. The game was going well until the ninth inning when Otsuka blew a save, which has been rather unusual this year. It was however on a three run walk off home run to David Ortiz. Giving up a home run to Ortiz isn’t that unusual, but the game felt like ours – even when we were just tied. Just “felt” like we were going to come back and win. And that did happen, until the final pitch of the game. Here is the MLB.com update for this game.
Game 2: When Game two started I was in a movie theatre in Plano seeing the new Pixar flick Cars on a DLP screen (which I highly recommend over a conventional movie theatre). I didn’t get to see this game until later in the evening, and I accidentally saw the score before I finished watching ghe game, so that got ruined for me. I then flew threw the game in about 20 minutes on TiVo.
We had SIX more doubles this game. But outside those doubles, we had 16 more hits this game, all singles apparently. Mark DeRosa was 4-6, Tex was 3-6, there were hits all over the place. All of our starters had at least one hit (Matthews & DeRosa each had four). This one was a nice bounceback after the major disappointment of game one. Given I saw so little of teh games today, I’m gonna leave it at this, but since this was all about offense and numbers, I suggest checking out the box score below and reading that. Here is the MLB.com update for this game.

After a few attempts to play, and after a rather lengthy rain delay, the Rangers and the Red Sox finally got a game in on Saturday. As just about every angle of the game’s weather conditions has been covered, I’ll try not to write about that.
Johnny R pitched for us (I still have a hard time typing in and getting right the name Rheinecker), and didn’t pitch as good as his first couple of outings, but then again, nobody else has pitched like that, either. Rhein went only 5.2 innings in this one, giving up 3ER on 9 hits with three strikeouts. With those kinds of numbers, I’m surprised he didn’t give up more than three. Given the odd timing of the game due to weather, I didn’t get to see all of it; but from what I saw, he seemed what his line indicated – just “OK”.
However, right after that came Bryan Corey. When he was called up, I made a snide comment about him, not exactly rude, but not exactly pleasant, either. However, at least for this game, he silenced all critics. He faced four batters, struck out all four of them. I did see this, it looked great. Obviously that kind of record won’t hold up, but wow did that look good. :) Cordero & Otsuka followed up, and Cordero gave up a run, Otsuka got the save.
Offensively, we were led by Blalock & DeRosa, who were 3-4 & 2-5 respectively. The remainder of the team garnered just four hits collectively. Blalock had a home run off of former Sox closer Keith Foulke in the ninth inning. We also had three more doubles, which really seems like our strength this season.
I wrote the above text on Monday night around 10:30PM, so my memory is a bit foggy. I did write some text on Saturday when this originally happened; that text is here:
—
Rangers beat the Sox in the one game that was actually played today. I’ll have something about it later. Wouldn’t mind a free hot dog or two, though.
The other one that was supposed to be played today was postponed and there will be a doublehader tomorrow. The first game starts at 11AM Dallas time, and the second at 4PM (presuming there isn’t a 16 inning game or something).
Both games will be on Fox Sports Southwest according to Josh Lewin during tonight’s game.
Here’s the official Rangers press release.

Well, today we had a day night doubleheader. The day game was technically a rainout makeup game from a few weeks back, and tonight’s game was the regularly scheduled game.
About half an hour ago, tonight’s game was postponed. As of right now, they’re still supposed to play the technical makeup game from the first part of the doubleheader.
The regularly scheduled game for tonight (which is now not being played) has no makeup date left. It’s amusing, as the games a few weeks back had two makeups. One was today, the other one was a date in the future (which I can’t recall at the moment). That game was also as I recall on one of the lone common off days the two teams had. No clue when they’re gonna make up the postponed game from tonight.
Tomorrow, perhaps? Course we then have to come back home for a 6PM game in Arlington on Monday. Yeesh, what a mess.

Well, we lost our second game in a row, 4-3 to the Red Sox. While no one ever truly likes losing, this 4-3 loss to the Sox is far more pallatlable than that complete stinkbomb in Kansas City the night before. Mr Yuck, indeed!
I had forgotten the game started at 6PM, so when I was driving home from work, I tuned in about 6:50 for the pre-game stuff, and the game was in the bottom of the second, and we were down 3-0 already. Not a good way to start. We did pick up a couple when Michael Young jacked a Tim Wakefield ball over the Monstah for a two run home run. That was pretty much it for offense, save for an RBI single by Hank Blalock over closer of the year Jonathan Papplebon in the 8th. In all we had eight hits, half of them by Gary Matthews & Mike Young. The other four were scattered amongs four players who got one each. We did get two more doubles tonight (DeRosa, Matthews) to extend our MLB leading lead in that category.
Vicente Pidente Padilla took the mound for us tonight. His start reminded me of Kevin Millwood’s the other day – not dominating, in fact bordering on falling over the edge, but when you look at the total line, it was a decent game, and that’s the bottom line, I guess. Well, no, wins and losses are, but that’s not completely under the control of the pitcher. Padilla went 7 giving up 3ER (all in the first) on 9 hits, 6 strikeouts, and one walk. Not a bad outing at all.
Still, it ended up as a loss. We go into a day night doubleheader saturday. I love doubleheaders. I hate day night doubleheaders, though. Especially at home. Blech. Speaking of that, have the Rangers ever done a day/night doubleheader? I can’t recall one in recent memory – can you?
I’ll say this, Sox fans seem to really love Kevin Youkilis by the reaction of them to just about anything he did. I always wished we had some guy like that where the whole place got excited about no matter what. Been awhile.
Anyone think that we’ll extend Gary Matthews & Mark DeRosa at the end of this season? I think Matthews has played himself into a possible long term solution in center. As much as I like Laynce Nix, I can’t argue against what Matthews has done up here – sustained success is something Nix has yet to achieve, unfortunately.
Anyone think that the thing with Jason Grimsley sounds like something from a CSI episode or something? There seems like a lot more “drama” then there has been with some of the other big names that have gotten in “trouble” (unofficially, of course)?

What the HELL was that mess? I mean…