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Another one of these late games – the Rangers have to get to a different division, I hate all these games that start after 9PM!
Tony Phillips of the A’s got his career 2,000th hit tonight – a single. That was a nice moment.
Esteban Loaiza came off the DL, sending Danny Kolb back to AAA. I was surprised, I didn’t think Loaiza was coming back till after the All Star Game. He only pitched the final out, but I was surprised to see him here.
I don’t remember a whole lot about this game, as again I was busy doing some other things. I’m not liking all these losses inside the division. This was our chance to distance us from the rest of the division, and we didn’t do it. :(

I was at the Ballpark for this game – and quite frankly, the best thing was the fireworks show. The Rangers were dead all night. Mike Morgan gave up four runs in the first, mostly on a three run home run to Edgar Martinez, and that’s all that was needed.
The Rangers had six hits, scattered over 9 innings, and didn’t have any kind of offense until two outs in the ninth, when we had loaded the bases (of which one was a walk, and one was a hbp), but John Halama was just too much – he had his first ever shutout, and he pitched a complete game. Todd Zeile did extend his hitting streak to 12.
Again, a really great fireworks show out at the Ballpark – I’ve seen all three this year so far, and probably will go to the one towards the end of the season.

I don’t remember a whole lot about this game, but I was fairly tired during this game, both because I was sleepy, and because I was otherwise occupied – I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to this game.
I fell asleep before the game was over – the last thing I remember about it, the score was 9-5, which was in the top of the 6th inning.
Looking at the results, a few nice things were Zeile extended his hitting streak to the 12, Danny Kolb pitching 2 2/3 innings, giving up one hit and one run, and another home run by Mark McLemore.

This was a pretty good game, actually. The score shows a close game, and it really was a flip-flop type of game. We had the lead, then they tied it, took the lead, and we tied it right back up. We took the lead, and they tied it in the 9th, but we ended up winning it in the bottom of the ninth – Rusty Greer, of course. :)
Luis Alicea had an interesting night – he was called out on strikes twice – it really looked like they should have been balls. After the second one, Alicea started to argue, but was tossed immediately, since he had griped before. When that happened Johnny Oates came out to defend Luis, and ended up getting into quite an argument himself. He did something that really reminded me of former Ranger manager Billy Martin – he kicked dirt on the umpire and got tossed, which I thought was cool. Oates accidentally kicked the umpire, too – which I thought was really bad. A few days later (I’m writing this on the 7th), I found out that nothing will happen because of this, apparently Oates and the ump are friends or something.
Todd Zeile extended his hitting streak to 11 games, and he hasn’t struck out more than once in around 75 at bats or so – nice control at the plate. Also pitching was Jordan Zimmerman, the brother of the Rangers’ Jeff. There was a nice piece in the newspaper about the Zimmerman brothers’ father who was at the game. It’s a great story, and I hope Jeff turns out to be more than just a flash. He’s got a great story.

Blowout! Oh my. There’s just too many things to talk about, I’ll probably forget a few.
When I saw the pitching lineup for this game, I expected it to be a high scoring game. I figured that Glynn would give up a few, and Ken Hill would probably get knocked around, as he’s not that good this year (has he ever been since we traded him to Anaheim?). However, I didn’t figure that it would end up quite like this! Of course, all 18 didn’t come from Hill, it was spread out all over the place – we didn’t score in just two of the 9 innings. It didn’t seem to matter whom the Angels sent out there to pitch, we banged ’em around really good last night.
We continued our recent dominance of the Angels in Anaheim, by taking the last 6 games there (going to last September), outscoring them a total of 57-8 in those six games. This series that just ended was 32-5, with 4 of the 5 coming in last night’s game alone! What’s more interesting is that even scoring 18 runs, we also left twelve guys on base – it could have been a whole lot worse – It’s just too bad we can’t do this against the Yankees, dammit!
Todd Zeile & Raffy each went four for four with four RBI’s. With 20 hits and 18 runs, you’d think we had some longball. We didn’t, there was only one home run, and it was a solo shot from a very non home run hitting Mark McLemore. It’s nice, as Mark was hitting the ball well this entire series, but didn’t get a whole lot to show for it. Mark could have had about 13 hits in 3 games, the way he was hitting the ball, it seemed.
Ryan Glynn wasn’t as stellar as Burkett & Morgan were the last two nights, but he pitched fairly well, working out of a jam with the bases loaded in the second or third, not allowing the Angels any runs, which was good. He did give up two runs in the 6th, which was when he was pulled. Mike Venafro gave up the other two (with Patterson & Kolb pitching an inning each, not giving up anything). Our pitching was fairly decent – it wasn’t as stellar as the last two nights, but you can’t have that every time. One interesting note – Glynn’s last two outings have resulted in the Rangers giving him run support of 14 & 18. :)
Bad news, as Pudge jammed his knee going into first base, and had to be helped off the field. As I write this on 2:45PM Thursday afternoon, there’s still no word as to his condition – I really hope it’s not a big break, as the AL All-Star teams are about to be announced, and I want his streak of appearances to continue.
Let’s see how we do against Seattle over the July 4th weekend. The Rangers have Thursday off, so if the A’s beat the Mariners, that means we’ll go into the weekend series with a 6 game lead on Seattle, a 7 game lead on Oakland, and a 9.5 game lead on Anaheim. I really would LOVE it if we could get to 10 games over the second place team by the All-Star break, but that probably won’t happen. I’ll be happy if we can maintain this lead we have now. :)

I thought Mike Morgan pitched the best game by a Ranger last night, but oh my! John Burkett – where’d he go? This guy pitching isn’t John Burkett! This was a spectacular followup to the game in Arlington a few days back against Anaheim. That night, Burkett obviously pitched the best he had all season, and I genuinely felt bad for him when it started to rain, and they were pulling the tarp on the field – Burkett still stood there. It’s really cool that he followed that up with an even better performance this time out. He went 7 innings, giving up no runs and only one hit. Everything seemed to be working – which was great. We could use this kind of Burkett, not the one who was shagged out at the beginning of the season. Still, I’d be surprised if the Rangers pick up his option for next year after this year – it might be on to the Pro Bowlers Tour for Burkett after this. Still, it’s great to see him coming around, it can’t do anything but help the team.
The bullpen tonight (Zim, Wetteland) pitched two no hit/run innings to close out the one hit shutout.
Our offense seemed slow to come – we scored in just the fourth inning (two small ball runs), and then in the 8th, Juan Gonzalez hit a three run home run to seal the game. Juan’s in the middle of one of his hot streaks – I hope if it keeps going, the all star break doesn’t screw it up, as he probably won’t go there.
Speaking of that, Juan is starting to sound a bit like a prima donna to me. I know he says “for the team”, but the two comments about “no HR derby” and “I won’t play unless voted in” are a tad to the prima-donnaish side of things, which the Rangers have always seemed able to stay away from.
One other interesting thing, Mike Morgan was shown on TV being very animated in the dugout after last nights’ game – it was pretty cool to see. :)