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This was another of those games I had to listen to at work, which means that I didn’t get a good listen. Nice to see some good pitching from Benoit, though. Too bad it was wasted.
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Due to parental duties, I only got to watch till the sixth inning (and due to work duties I can’t write a bunch either). But what I saw was pretty great. Juan Dominguez looked sharp. He went six innings, giving up just one run on two hits. His walks were high though (five), but he k’ed 3. Overall a pretty good performance.
Ryan Franklin did not have a great performance (5IP, 10H, 6ER), but then we always seem to do well against him. Nice home run by Kevin Mench.
The video of Jim Knox dancing with a large dog was very disturbing.
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I had tickets to this game, but I couldn’t go – still haven’t fully recovered from being sick, and I don’t think a 100 plus degree day would be good for me, or for my 4 month old daughter, either. Stayed home and watched.
Chris Young continued his late season pickup and threw another good game, if a short one. He only went five innings, but gave up just a solo home run to Ichiro (no shame there) on the second pitch of the game. After that he settled down and allowed just three more hits over the rest of his time, and struck out six. Ichiro also did him in in the fifth too with an at bat that was about 15 or 16 pitches. Probably cost Chris coming back out for the sixth inning, as he topped out at 100 pitches thrown. Still, if you take away the 15 from Ichiro, that makes 85 which is still about 10 too many for the fifth inning. Our bullpen gave up 3 more runs, but we had enough tonight to hang on.
Mench homered in the fourth, Phil Nevin doubled in two guys in the 6th, and Tex had a solo home run in the 7th. The two home run balls were definitely wind assisted, as they both landed in the first row right over the fence. Neither looked like a home run ball off the bat.
I was kind of surprised that Jim Knox didn’t turn up in right field to give a ball to the guy in the green shirt. If you watched the telecast, you know what I mean. They did however, talk to the loudmouth they showed around Section 226, though.
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Nope, wasn’t any better than the rest of the games on the road trip. We got swept for the third time this series, going 1-12 on the entire trip. In fact, for the entire month of August, we’re 4-15. Way to go, guys. Not much else needs to be said, really.
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August 20, 2005 was my 40th birthday. And I spent it sick. Wasn’t a fun day, spent most of it horizontal or at the porcelain altar. The Rangers didn’t fare much better, getting shut down AGAIN for the 11th time in the 12 games of the road trip.
Scott Kazmir, who is a guy I’d love to have (as I’m sure the Mets would too ), shut down the Rangers going six innings, giving up just one run, four hits, and striking out ten. He looked pretty damn awesome. The two runs we got were in the traditional Rangers way, solo home runs (Matthews in 6th, Soriano in 9th). Outside of that, we had just four hits the rest of the game, pretty much were dominated. The game didn’t feel as close as the 4-2 score indicates.
On our pitching side, Benoit seems to indicate he isn’t cut out for starting. He went 5 innings, giving up 4 runs on six hits with 2 walks. Not godawful, but not great, either. Brocail, Shouse, & Loe kept the Rays off the board for the rest of the game, but it didn’t do much good.
Sunday’s game is the last one of the road trip. Probably won’t be any better.
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You know, when we lose 2-1 games, I tend to think along the lines of “Well, we were beaten by a better performance”. That is definitely true, but in this case, this 2-1 loss felt like 10-1 loss, given all the other losses surrounding it in the schedule.
Juan Dominguez threw a shutout through 5 innings, but gave up a couple of hits and a sac fly in the 6th, which gave the Rays their two runs. It was enough because we got one in the first, and that was it. Seth McClung was brilliant, scattering just 3 hits over his 7 innings of work. It’s hard to beat that no matter who the team is.
Steve Karsay looked pretty good again in this game, going 2.2 IP and giving up donut, while striking out two. Given the state of our bullpen, he’s probably a candidate for the pen next year, too.
A loss is a loss, and we’ve got too many of them to recover from now.
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Ah well. That didn’t last long. CJ Wilson ran out there and got murdered again. I know you need to run guys out there and let ’em take their lumps to grow homegrown pitchers. But boy is it ugly doing that, and it generally makes the natives restless, especially when you live in a sports town so hell bent on “Now now now”.
Hank Blalock had another error today and went 1 for 3. He’s been bumped down in the lineup, as he doesn’t seem to be producing of late. All of our starters in this game got at least one hit, except for Adrian Gonzalez, who was called back up before this game (he played first, Tex DH’ed). We were led by David Dellucci (2-4, 2R) and Sandy Alomar (2-4). We had four doubles (DeRosa, Dellucci, Young, Alomar). But not enough for the win, because our pitching stunk up the joint again. Although if you took CJ Wilson out of the equation and put a zero in where he was, then we would have won.
Was really nice to see Justin Thompson back in the majors. A really nice story. I hope he sticks around and is effective for more than just the last 6 weeks of the season, as I would like to see all the work he took to get back here and all the loyalty shown on both his side and the Rangers side pay off for more than just six weeks of relief pitching.
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