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Well, the offensive onslaught continues. Over the last three games (26 innings), we’ve scored 37 runs including a bazillion home runs. I went into last night’s game with a feeling of ambivalence – having just lost Doug Davis on waivers to the team we were playing. While Doug hasn’t lit it up in awhile, I still liked the guy and held out hope he could get it going in a Ranger uniform. Oh well, that’s in the past now. So as this game started, I figured after a few good offensive performances, we couldn’t get another one, could we?
Yes, we could. Juan Gonzalez just continues to tear the hyde off the ball the last few days jacking a very impressive home run and hitting the ball around the field going 3 for 5 with 3 RBI’s. In fact, the only other (Ranger) home run of the game came from Mike Young – a three run shot late in the game. The other recent hit machine, Alex Rodriguez didn’t have any home runs, but went 3 for 6. Josh Lewin said something about his raising his batting average something like 60 points in the last two days because of his recent barrage of hits. Carl Everett & Hank BLalock both had doubles. We also left more men on base than scored, and when you score 11, it tells you that it could have been even bigger offensively.
On the pitching side, Ryan Drese didn’t pitch wonderfully, but pitched a hell of a lot better than his brief experimentation with an ERA in the 100’s showed! He did dance with trouble early, walking too many, but getting helped out by a few double plays early. R.A. Dickey went 2.2 innings giving up but a lone run, and Ramirez came in in the 9th to shut things down when Dickey looked like he started running out of gas.
Nice to see Erasmo Ramirez & Gerald Laird both make their major league debuts last night. They were in the game in the 9th at the same time – something I can’t recall seeing much of in the past. And speaking of Laird, I really feel for Todd Greene getting hurt when he did – just as his playing time was about to increase as he got out from under the “three catcher” situation. :(
The Raffy watch is still stuck on 497. If he doesn’t get any in the next couple of games, it looks like #500 might happen at home, something I didn’t think possible when he went on the road needing 3 in 6 games.
We’re now just one game under .500 at 13-14 ending the month of April. Considering who we were playing all month, and the fact we’re only 4 games out, I’m actually feeling pretty good about where we are at the moment.

First off, sorry for not updating during the Yankees series. I attended all three games at the Ballpark, and when I came home on Sunday, I just felt like taking a break, like I didn’t want to have to “force myself” to write about the games – I just wanted to go to the ballpark, watch the games without worrying about what I’d have to write about them. So I did. :)
Well, the big boppers were out in force tonight, and that’s good given that we gave up rather a lot of runs. We got out early, and I thought the game was in hand quickly. I actually fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, and when I woke up, it was 13-11! I zipped backwards on my TiVo and saw what happened – our bullpen couldn’t keep them off the board, which is fairly unusual. (which is a good thing, really) In the end we prevailed, but not from lack of letting the Blue Jays back into the game.
Alex Rodriguez continued his dominance of Skydome going 4 for 6 with a double, a home run, and four RBI’s. Put that together with Sunday’s performance, and he’s 9 for his last 11 with 10 RBI’s! Juan Gonzalez had two home runs, as did Carl Everett. It was the night for the longball with Todd Greene also getting one. All six home runs were bullet shots, no doubters that just flew out of the place.
Raffy didn’t have any home runs, but did have an nice hit that beat the usual overshift we’ve been seeing against him lately. As much as I loved seeing us put up 16 runs, I really did not like seeing us give up 11.

I don’t have much time on Friday to write – I’m going to the game tonight, and am leaving early.
However… was nice to see a major trouncing of someone else. There were runs all over the place. Raffy’s 496th probably would be the standout moment for me. And it sounded like R.A. Dickey was wonderful. I wonder if we’ll try him in the rotation?

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Behind a nice pitching performance by John Thomson, the Rangers bounced back and beat the Red Sox 6-1 on a rainy night in Arlington. Some of the storms in the area affected my recording of the game, because my satellite feed got knocked out for pieces of the game (although I only missed about 10 minutes total) – plus I had one blackout while I was watching the game. Anyway, rain delay in the 7th aside, that’s the end of my rain talk.
Going against a knuckleballer (there’s only two in the AL – Tim Wakefield and Steve Sparks) can either be great or awful. You either score 20 runs or get nothing it seems. We did get off to a start that led me to believe there would be 20 runs, that being the leadoff home run by Ryan Christenson. The big hit was Juan Gonzalez’ two run single with the bases loaded in the 6th to take the lead before the rain delay came. We picked up another run on a bases loaded walk that inning, and then scored a run in each of the two innings after the rain delay as well to take it to 6-1.
As said before, Thomson pitched well, going seven innings and giving up just one run, walking one and striking out three. Now if we can only get Park to do this all the time…

A frustrating game. I have to admit that before the game started, I predicted doom. The two highest paid AL pitchers went head to head, but since the pitching quality of said pitchers wasn’t quite the same, I expected us to be losing something like 10-0 after 5 innings. We did have an ugly start early, but managed to get out of the first five innings only down 4-1. Not insurmountable, especially given that Pedro did not seem like Pedro. He gave up 6 walks in his time on the mound, threw 120 pitches, and seemed at least reachable, if not hittable, as we only had a hit or two through that time. Pedro was still pretty good.
However, their bullpen was not. After we gave up another run by Esteban (Oh NO) Yan in the 8th on a home run, we stormed back in the bottom of the eighth. We scored 3 times to make the score 5-4. That was capped by a two run home run by Juan Gonzalez, and we had two on with two outs. Kevin Mench hit what looked like a liner to left, but it didn’t hook quite enough, and we were out. We almost won it again in the bottom of the 8th. Arod was on first with two outs after having reached there on a fielder’s choice after BARELY beating out a double play ball.
Raffy jacked one to right field, and it died about 3 feet from the fence. We had a total of three balls that missed home runs by a few feet each. Blalock, Raffy, & I forget who else had one, but if we had the usual Texas wind, we would have had probably about 4 or 5 more runs, and won the game.
Carl Everett had another really nice play in left to take away a double – his being named AL Player of the Week seems to be carrying over so far into this week. :)