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Damnit. Lost two games in a row against the Astros in essentially the same way. Well, OK, maybe not, but that’s what it felt like to me. We had gone up 6-1 on the strength of a 6 run 5th inning (two three run home runs by us). However, Morgan Ensberg stormed back with a grand slam that topped a 7 run 5th for the Astros, gave them the lead, and they never looked back, really. Damn.
Crap. Now we have to win tomorrow’s finale by three runs to take the series and the Silver Boot.

I hate games like this. These are emotional rollercoasters. You get the high of coming back to tie the game, and the BIG low of giving it right back and losing the game. I’m writing this on Monday, so most of the details aren’t fresh in my mind, but this was supposed to be rematch of the pitcher’s duel from Arlington last weekend between Roy Oswalt and Ryan Drese. It wasn’t. Oswalt gave up 9 hits and 5 runs. Drese gave up 8 hits and five runs. Neither was really crisp at all. Drese at least got a ND in the game.
Oh well, the Lone Star series is now tied after we won 2 the last weekend.

Well, this was a day game, which means I only superficially got to pay attention. I did score the game, but about 40% of my scorecard was me looking at what had happened on the MLB Gameday scorecard stuff. And I didn’t miss much. Wasdin was not good today, we fell behind a lot early, and that was about it. Made a little noise when Kevin Mench hit a three run home run, but we were behind the 8 ball in this one almost immediately, and never really had a chance to win, I felt.
The loss makes the 2-2 split in Seattle seem like an 0-4 to me.

No commentary from me, because something happened last night that almost never happens. I got tired in the middle of the game and went to bed! I hate these 9PM starts.

No time to write commentary today.
Brett Carre: The fun in Seattle ends with a 4-3 loss on Tuesday. This was a game that was on the table, but we couldn’t pull it out. One of the few times this year that we couldn’t pull out one like this.
Benoit pitched decent tonight, but we gave up just too many tonight as we could only produce 3 runs tonight. Some people said tonight his future with the Rangers was on the line. I think he preformed well enough to stop talks about that until his next start!
On the offensive side we had chances but didn’t take advantage of them. This is a game I think we should have won, but Seattle got the big hit tonight by Aurilia, the two run homer with two outs in the 6th.
Kenny is on the mound tomorrow. Does that mean we can already put a check in the “W” column?

There’s no scorecard stuff from me. My brother called, and I didn’t get to start watching the game until 11:30PM. I did actually start scoring it, but after three innings I was falling asleep, so I gave up and watched the rest of the game in about 10 minutes in high speed scan on my TiVo. ;)
BOMBS AWAY!
The Rangers hit five home runs in this game, including two in the first inning, and two overall by Hank Blalock. The offense was the star of this game by far. We also had home runs by Soriano, Mench, & Texieira. The HR accounted for 7 of the 8 runs we got.
It’s good we had offense, as Bierbrodt had nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true, he got the first two batters of the game out, but not much after that. He gave up 3 in his 1.2 innings. Ricardo Rodriguez went 3.2, and gave up a run, not too bad. Mahay, Francisco, Almanzar, & Cordero went a combined 3.2 innings and gave up just one more run. Cordero got his 23rd save.
It was almost all good. A nice start to the road trip.

Ryan Drese pitched a complete game. He gave up one run, on a double play ball, so there was no RBI involved. He walked two, struck out four, and threw 114 pitches. He was sensational. He lost.
Roy Oswalt was absolutely untouchable. He gave up 4 hits over his 8 innings, and a play in the first inning pretty much summed it up. That was Beltran’s robbing of Mike Young’s home run ball over the center field wall in the first inning. After some theatrics on the catch, Beltran held in his hand the closest thing we had to a run all day. We had a triple by EY, a double by Rod Bajaras, but squat otherwise. Oswalt was absolutely dominating. Was amazing we got what we did, tell you the truth.
Sad part is that Ryan Drese lost the game, when he pitched well enough to win it on any other day. Don’t feel too bad about this loss, as we certainly got enough pitching, something we’ve lacked the last few years. We went 5-1 on the homestand, including 8 of the last 9 to take first place in the division, and as I write this on Sunday afternoon the A’s haven’t played yet, so we will head out on the road in sole possession of first. Whether it’s 1 game or 2, is up to the A’s tonight.
We won’t see another home game until Friday July 16th – 19 days from now.

Rain. Lots of it. It rained for the first three innings or so, and then it rained from the 7th onwards. There was no rain in the middle, but it was pretty ugly. I ended up sitting in the last row of the upper deck behind home plate, I wasn’t in the mood to sit in the rain, even though I had an umbrella with me.
This was a good back and forth game. There was no real dominant pitching here, in fact, there was some awful pitching today (Frank Francisco). The rest was just OK. We had a 2-0 lead, then 2-1, then 2-2, and we went up, they went up, it went on that way until the bottom of the sixth when we were up 7-3. I was feeling pretty good about the game, but that’s when Francisco came in and laid a big stinking one on the field. The game was tied 7-7 at that point. I was glad we weren’t behind, but not thrilled at having given up the lead.
The Hammer, who lead the offense with a 4 for 5 day, scoring three times, and having 2 RBI’s hit a game winning solo home run into the Rangers bullpen off brief former Ranger Dan Miceli to win it. Cordero got his 22nd save. Speaking of former Rangers and home runs, our old friend Mike Lamb had a solo home run in the game. I’m glad he’s doing well in Houston, I just hope the Beltran trade doesn’t end up jacking with Mike’s time, given all the position shifts they’ve had.
Anyway we’re now 8 in a row, and are 13 games over 500. Right now only the Yankees have a better record than us in the AL, and only one team in the NL has a better record – the Cardinals. Who would have thought it? Hell, Tampa Bay is now one game over 500 and in third place in their division. Bizarre things are afoot in 2004.