Rangerfans.com

Before the Rangers got to Oakland, CJ Wilson mouthed off about what he doesn’t like about Oakland. Which is pretty much everything. The mound, their fans (for not showing up), etc.. There were some negative CJ Wilson signs in the stadium, but it didn’t matter, as CJ shut ’em down.
He went six, giving up just four hits and one run. Walked a few too many (three), but struck out seven. Got his 11th win of the season, lowering his ERA to 3.28. Tateyama, Lowe, & Feldman followed him up, and each threw a scoreless inning.
The Rangers offense was fairly concentrated. We put up a six spot in the second inning, and then a three spot in the fourth. Most of which came against former Rangers pitcher Brandon McCarthy. Brandon had to come out of the game when Endy Chavez nailed him in the knee with a batted ball, that bounced all the way into the Rangers bullpen, which is quite a haul in Oakland.
As we work in the AL West, it’s nice to see us beating up on Oakland & Seattle. We should do that as the defending AL Champions.

Derek Holland pitched a quality start (6IP, 2ER), but lost the game. Well, technically, he didn’t lose the game, Uehara got tagged with the loss. At the time Holland came out of the game, the score was tied 3-3.
Uehara allowed three hits in his inning of work. That’d do it, usually.
All three of the Rangers runs came from home runs. Josh Hamilton had a solo shot in the fourth, and Ian Kinsler had a two run shot in the fifth. That was it for our scoring.
Bah, was hoping for a series sweep.

Seattle actually managed to hit the ball around a bit in this game. They put up all six of their runs in the first three innings against Alexi Ogando who was unusually awful. Not like I’m pretending he’s unhittable, but this was pretty awful for him. Just 2.2 innings pitched, eight hits and six earned runs. That was it for the runs the Mariners got. The Rangers had five relievers follow Ogando. They were Tateyama, Lowe, Oliver, Adams & Feliz. No runs from any of them, so that’s good.
The Rangers had nearly as many walks given to them as hits. They had nine hits, and six walks. That kind of combination is usually bad news for the opponent, and it was this night, too.
The Rangers had four out of their nine hits as extra base hits. Two doubles (Young, Torrealba), and two home runs (Chavez & Kinsler). Chavez had a good night overall, going 3-5 with two RBI’s and a run scored. He’s turning out to be very much the valuable extra guy who does well when you plug him in. Glad to see that. I’ll wager he’ll be around next year, too. :)
The walkoff was against the final Seattle pitcher Aaron Laffey who faced just two batters, and didn’t get either of them out. He allowed singles to Endy Chavez & Josh Hamilton, which scored Ian Kinsler ,who led the inning off against another pitcher.
Gotta love walkoffs at home. :)

Nope, Seattle’s still pretty bad. They have one of the best team blogs out there in USS Mariner, but the team itself, pretty awful. They have two really good starting pitchers (Felix Hernandez & Michael Pineda), and an extremely good fielding centerfielder (Franklin Gutierrez) but that’s about it. Team still can’t hit.
As evidenced by their two run, six hit attack against Matt Harrison, who pitched well. Seven innings, five hits, no walks, six punchouts, and just two runs. Nice start for Matt, who earned his 10th win of the season, joining I believe everyone else on the starting rotation in that regard. Mark Lowe & Darren O’Day followed, each turning in a scoreless inning.
The Rangers jumped all over Charlie Furbush (who?!?), the Seattle starter. Four innings pitched, eight hits, four walks, seven runs allowed (six earned). There wasn’t a ton of power, just a lot of sustained hits. We only had two extra base hits in the fifteen overall we got. Both were by Nelson Cruz (double, home run). The Rangers also walked seven times.
Yeah, Seattle’s not that good. Bet Don Wakamatsu is either laughing somewhere or is pissed off. Not sure which.

Colby Lewis started this game, and gave up all three runs to the Indians. Had an decent line if not stellar. 7.1 innings, five hits, three runs. unfortunately, the Rnagers offense didn’t wake up until he was out of the game. Colby left down 3-0. Does it still count as a quality start if you’re losing?
Darren Oliver & Mike Adams followed him, not allowing anything.
On the other side, though, we didn’t have a ton going ourselves. We managed just seven hits for the entire game. But there was a good concentration in the bottom of the eighth, as we threw a five spot up there. The first six batters in the inning reached (walk, single, single, single walk, single). After that, we had a force out, but that was constructive, as it scored a run.
Michael Young also reached 2,000 hits for his career in this game. Was nice that it happened at home. It obviously brings up the question of can he get to 3,000? It’s possible, sure. But he’ll definitely have to play for awhile. He’s 34 at the moment, and there’s 47 more games this season after this one. Figure that would put him conservatively at 3,050 for a career total after the 2011 season. That means he’d need 950 to get to 3,000. Would mean if he sustained 200 hits per season, he’d need to play into the 2016 season to get it. And he’d have to not have any dropoff in hit production to get there. If you play more conservatively, and say he gets regularly 150 hits per season, he’d need to play into the 2018 season to get there, at which point he’d be 41. Not impossible here in the AL, but probably unlikely. We’ll have to see how sustained he can keep hitting over the next 4-5 years to see how realistic of a chance he would have for 3,000.

CJ Wilson & Fausto Carmona had a good pitcher’s duel going. After 6 innings, the score was 0-0. Then the wheels fell off. Well, not completely. Wilson still had a good line when he came out of the game. 6.2 innings pitched, five hits, 3 runs (2 earned), 9 strikeouts, two walks. Not bad at all. Darren Oliver and Koji Uehara followed up nicely, allowing just a single walk between the two of them.
At this point, the Rangers were up 4-3, on the strength of a four run bottom of the 7th inning. Couple of singles, an error, another single, and a sac fly produced the runs. Not sexy, but it worked. We were winning.
Then Neftali Feliz came in for the top of the ninth and laid an egg. Double, sacrifice bunt, single, flu out, double, home run, then a couple of outs. Actually, the home run was givien up by Tateyama. It was’t a pretty ninth inning.
We did pick up a run in the bottom of the ninth, but the top was pretty deflating. Made for an even more annoying than usual loss.

Tom Grieve: “That’s some kind of win right there!”
Early on, I thought this game was going to be a big offensive noisemaker, and a loss. After three innings, we were down 7-3. Derek Holland was pretty bad, didn’t make it out of the second inning, throwing 53 pitches, giving up six runs. Bah.
But we fought back, making it 7-5 in the 6th, and then tying the game 7-7 in the bottom of the ninth. The bottom of the ninth one was rather exciting, as it was a two run home run by Michael Young. I don’t think there’s ever a bad home run in the bottom of the ninth, even when you’re down 15 runs or so. :)
Anyway, in the bottom of the 11th, we scored on a pretty bizarre play to win. Elvis Andrus was on second base, and Josh Hamilton was at the plate. He hit a slow grounder to shortstop, one that wasn’t quickly picked up. Josh busted ass down the line, and beat it out, but all the time Elvis was running. Never stopped, kept running home, and the first baseman stalled just enough looking at the umpire at first, so that his throw home was just delayed enough to allowe Elvis to win the game. Walk off infield single.
If you click on the “MLB Link” above this text, and then on the video tab, you can see a highlight of this play. It’s quite cool to watch!

The Rangers pulled off a salvage win in the series finale in Detroit. Alexi Ogando, easily our biggest surprise this year, went 6.1 innings, allowing just two runs. IT was his third win over the Tigers this season.
Our offense was a triple by Michael Young and ten other singles. If Michael Young played here, given the way he goes to right center, I could see him leading the league in triples pretty easily. :)

Much like the game before it, this one was one on home runs by the Tigers, latter in the game. Alex Avila & Ryan Raburn handled this one.
Sigh. What is it with Detroit?

A late comeback wasted. Nelson Cruz & Mike Napoli both hit home runs in the top of the 8th. However, Brennan Boesch hit one of his own in the bottom of the 8th off of Mike Adams to win the game.
Not a great debut for Mike Adams as a Ranger. Probably won’t be the way he performs overall (aka pull a Eric Gagne for the Red Sox), but you never want to see that in Game 1 with your new import.