Thank You Ryan Dempster, Rangers Beat Orioles 5-1

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: Dempster again gave up a first inning run.

The Rangers had 9 LOB, 4 of those LOB when the Rangers were down 1 run in the early innings.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: After giving up the early run and 2 hits in the first inning Dempster only gave up 2 more hits the rest of the way and retired the last 11 Orange birds he faced with 8 strong IP.  And Nathan capped it off by striking out the side, all swinging, to finish the game in a non-save situation.

In the 4th Soto had the RBI, scoring Nellie (did anyone notice that it looked like Nellie was cringing after sliding into home on that play?), to put the Rangers up to 2-1 at that point and up for good as it would turn out.  David "Charlie" Murphy again had a multi-hit, multi-RBI game.

Elvis had a great defensive play, going towards 3B he back handed a grounder and made a jump-throw from at least 2 feet deep in the left field grass to get the batter out at first.  How has he not won a gold glove yet?

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Nathan set a franchise record by recording his 22nd consecutive save this past Saturday.  Now if the Rangers make the postseason let's see how he does converting saves then.  And let's see if this is the Ryan Dempster we'll see down the stretch.

As I've had mentioned to me by a good friend, doesn't ex-Ranger manager and current Orioles skipper Buck Showalter kinda look like Dr. Zaius from the original Planet of the Apes movie?  Kinda?  Compare for yourself below:

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Rangers Win 2 Out of 3 Versus Blue Jays in Weekend Series

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: In the loss in the first game of the series Yu walked 10 in 7 IP.

And the Rangers mighty, potent offense (written sarcastically) managed a whopping 4 runs in the first 2 games of the series.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: But, the Rangers won game 2 of the series because they were bailed out by a great group effort by the pitching staff (6 pitchers saw action), including 4.1 IP by Oswalt in which he  gave up only 1 ER.

In the last game of the series the offense woke up scoring 11 runs with Young going for 5 RBI's in the game.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Dempster didn't make to the trip to his native land of Canada because of "personal reasons."  Some speculated that it was passport (lost?) issues.  Weird.

The Rangers look like, in some games, they cannot put runs across the plate and in others they drop double digit runs their opponents.  How about this?  How about some offensive consistency?

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