Rangerfans.com

Back to putting my head in the sand. Blech! What exposure on national television. :(
And Jeff Fassero is starting tomorrow and I’ll be at the game. I can’t hide my head in the sand, I’ll have to watch it. :)

A good win, with decent pitching (although not great), and a bunch of offense – lots of home runs, they were all over the place again! – Sorry, an extremely abbreviated commentary from me.
A day game tomorrow – that doesn’t fit well with me, we seem to keep losing these.

I just want to cry – what happened in Detroit? I don’t like bashing teams, but hey, we were supposed to beat up on Detroit, not lose three out of four to them. Yeesh – I hope it wasn’t a matter of overconfidence. I grew up in Philadelphia, the legend of the ’64 Phillies comes to mind here.
Didn’t get to see it, since I was at work when the game was on, but from the radio guys, it seemed like a really sloppily played game. Juan Gonzalez was particularly ragged on by Nadel/Cotroneo (“What’s this rookie league guy doing up here?”). Goody & Rusty did one of those “I got it, I got it, I got it”, and then no one got it as it fell between them.
We hit something like four home runs, and still didn’t win. Yuck. :(
We ended up 70-93 lifetime in Tiger Stadium, and 5-5 against the Tigers this year. That second one is sad.

Much better – this is what we should be doing to the Tigers. The power stroke was working for us today. Gregg Zaun hit his first “official” home run as a Ranger, too (not counting his “called shot”). Not going to say much about this one, don’t have time.

Ugh – This is not happening! This is not happening! (Hiding head in sand)

There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this game – and I watched the whole thing. Pitching was the name of the game here. The Rangers got blown away by Brian Moehler. Shut out on only three hits (two of them by Mac, the other by Royce Clayton). We never got anything going ever.
On the flip side, Esteban Loaiza was also pitching well. Had a shut out going into the 7th when he gave up the only run of the game – a solo homer to Gabe Kapler. Other than that, Loaiza pitched well, if not dominating. Ranger pitching gave up 10 hits, and were helped by some nice defense to keep it scoreless as long as it was.
It definitely was a pitcher’s duel – and in Tiger stadium, too. That was nice. Kind of like “Hey, we’re not coming back here, let’s have a really great game”. And it was. It stunk that the Rangers lost, but it was a great baseball game. Can’t beat that.

John Burkett allowed the first four Blue Jays to reach base, and Danny Kolb was up and warming in the bullpen before there was even an out recorded – I thought Burkett was headed for the quickest exit of the season for him. However, he got it together, and escaped the first inning allowing only one run to score. In fact, that was the only run allowed by him all day. He pitched rather well after the first four batters of the game, going 6 2/3 innings, allowing only one run on seven hits. When he was pulled, we were up 3-1, and it took Tim Crabtree all of one pitch to get out of the 7th. A pretty well pitched game by us, although Wetteland allowed another run in the 9th – he’s getting the saves, but doesn’t seem as dominating as he was the last two years – I wonder if he’s still bothered by the injury that slowed him down at the start of this season.
Our offense was in the 4th inning. We had more than that, but all we needed came in the third. Raffy had another RBI, and Todd Zeile had a two run home run. We did get a fourth run on a Royce Clayton RBI single in the 8th, but that was icing – Raffy & Todd gave us all we needed in the third.
Our pitching kept us in the lead (once we got it), and it was a very cool game to watch. I hope to someday go to that hotel in Toronto and watch the Rangers play. :)
Another road sweep for us, and we’re 27 games over 500 for the first time in club history (not sure if that includes the Senators or not, but I would think it wouldn’t). On to Detroit – would be nice to sweep there, too.