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It was an interesting game for me, as it was on the radio, which is always good, but I was also walking around the Dallas Arboretum with my wife. We were taking pictures out there with a new digital camera we got for her, and I had a portable radio with me listening to the game while we walked around. For the record, I listened with only one earbud in, so I could still hear her. :)

The kind of game you never saw much of from Texas, let alone in spring, when offense is even higher than anywhere else. A rather well pitched game on both sides. Problem was that Seattle pitched just a little bit better. Pitching totally dominated this game, and there’s not a whole lot else to add for this one. We’ve had a lot of good pitching the last few games, I hope it’s not a spring training fluke.

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Where do you start with this one? The Rangers mashed thirteen runs, got twenty hits, and gave up not a whole lot of everything. A great effort all around.

With 20 hits, there’s bound to be several folks with a few of ’em. Blalock went 4 for 4, Adrian Gonzalez went 3 for 6, Gerald Laird was 2 for 4, as was Mike Young. There’s offense all over the place in this game, which was nice to see. The only problem was that the pitchers they did it against aren’t likely to be there come April, so that tempers the output a bit.

Pitching wise, RA Dickey continues to show to me that he deserves a starting rotation spot, going 4 innings, giving up just 1 run (on a solo home run), and walking just one. Mickey Calloway pitched very well against his former club. He went 4 innings, giving up squat. No runs, no hits, and getting two K’s. Erasmo Ramirez had a not particuarly great 9th inning, but between the three pitchers, we gave up 2 runs on 7 hits over 9 innings. A good day’s work.

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The ghost of Barry Zito’s $50,000 signing bonus with the Rangers continues to haunt us even in spring training. Zito shut us down. No surprise there, he always does that. But from what I heard, he sounded like he was in great regular season form. That’s mostly why we couldn’t get anything started, and pretty much set the table for the A’s pitchers that followed.

Glendon Rusch became the second Rangers pitcher to go four innings this spring, giving up just one run. Actually, our pitching was pretty good overall. The 5 guys we sent out there gave up just two runs over eight innings on 8 hits.

Soriano continued to have a great spring offensively, going 2 for 4, and driving in the only Ranger run. There were only three other hits scattered around the Ranger lineup for the rest of the game.

The Oakland pitching shut us down. I probably could have said just that, and it would have been enough. :)

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As yesterday was a busy day for me, I didn’t get to play refresh with the box score for this game.

Brian Jordan got to join the party in an A game, going 2 for 3 with an RBI. Hank Blalock was 2 for 4 with 2 RBI’s. Laynce Nix was also 2 for 4. Pitching wise, the Rangers site and the Dallas Morning News all say the Rangers were happy with Chan Ho yesterday. I don’t know if that was solely because he pitched “OK” after being hurt the day before, or if it was something I couldn’t see in a box score. Either way, Park went four innings, giving up 3 runs. Although the stories said a couple of his innings were brilliant. We’ll see.

Kenny Rogers was formally given the job of opening day pitcher in Oakland – I wonder who will pitch the home opener – might be Kenny again. Kenny went 3 innings, giving up just one run, and from what I can tell pitched pretty decently.

Brett Tomko, someone the Rangers were after, but I didn’t want, gave up 8 hits over three innings. How he escaped with just one run is a bit beyond me, but I still feel relieved he signed elsewhere.

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Another spring training game where you watch it hitting refresh on the box score page. Will have details probably in the morning.

Sorry, no time for commentary on the game – too busy on Thursday.

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I got to listen to this over the Internet today as the Mariners were broadcasting this. However, I couldn’t listen much due to work going on, and from the bits I did listen to we played a pretty sloppy game. I also never seem to get into it as much when it’s another team’s broadcasters. My mind wanders, and I have a hard time paying attention.

Walks killed us this game. We gave up 6 of them, and I believe 4 of them scored. Can’t win games giving away runs like that. Ryan Drese (who I’d prefer go away) and Brian Shouse stunk up the joint. Actually Drese wasn’t TOO bad, but he did give up a couple. Shouse gave up 3 in .2 of an inning – not good. Colby Lewis gave up no earned runs in his two innings, and none were given up by Erasmo Ramirez & T Williams either.

I’m also noticing that we haven’t had many longballs this spring. I know our offense is supposed to be different this year, but there’s been only one or two, which is kind of surprising, given that we’ve played 7 games, and at least one B game that I’m aware of. Offensively today we only had four hits, we were pretty well shut down, with no player getting more than one hit.

Looking at the box score it doesn’t too too bad, but it sounded sloppy on the webcast I listened to. Can’t wait for the real thing.

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I got to listen to this over the Internet today as the Padres were broadcasting this.
Soriano did not strike out – an accomplishment. He did go 2 for 3 along with a walk, and a couple of RBI’s – he had a great game.
Overall we had a decent pitching performance. Callaway & Dickey each went three innings. Cordero, Nelson, & Almanzar also all pitched, and we gave up a total of 6 hits and just two runs over the 9 innings of pitching – something that I hope we see a lot more of this season.

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In looking at the line score, this game didn’t seem to be too bad, as we were winning at the time we had a major meltdown in the bottom of the 8th inning. We gave up a “crooked number” in the box score (7 runs), and that pretty much doomed us. To our credit, we tried to come back, picking up 2 in the top of the ninth, but it just wasn’t enough. Most of that meltdown was by Jeff Zimmerman, who was credited with 7 earned runs with no outs recorded. Saw a quote by him that said his ERA looked like a fish. I didn’t get that at first until I realized the infinity symbol is a sideways 8, and it does look like a fish, sorta. :) Three of the other runs were given up by Glendon Rusch, someone I don’t expect to be here past Spring, so I don’t much care about that. Zim, well this was his first game in two years or so, and while a 7 spot is really ugly, I’m not to worried about that either. The rest of our pitching was pretty good (5 pitchers combined for 9 hits over 5.1 innings, and 2 runs). A few too many hits, but not a lot of runs.
Mike Young, Kevin Mench, & Gerald Laird led the way offensively. Hell, even Ramon Nivar took a walk! We got a couple of home runs today, one by Mark Teixeira, and another by Kevin Mench (off of short lived former Ranger Dave Burba).
OK, after winning the first two, we lost the next three. (unless you count an unofficial B game, in which case, we’re 2-4).
Still waiting a bit longer before I attempt to score any games – scoring spring training games this early in spring training is a nightmare. Although someone I met at the Ballpark last year gave me an idea. Score the game, but score it as if there were no substitutions in the game at all. I might just do that next weekend on paper, as my “Spring Training” for scoring. ;)