Rangers Beat Seamen 3-1

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: The Rangers managed only 5 hits.  And Ogando looked shaky in 5 IP.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: But Ogando only gave up the 1 ER and kept the Rangers in it.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: And Wash threw out a funky lineup.  Murph was moved down, Pierzynski was moved up the batting order, Baker played 1B, Garcia played SS, Berkman and Moreland sat, and Elvis DH'ed.  It got the job done in the end though.

Now the Rangers will try to win the 4 game series against the Mermen tomorrow afternoon.

The A's finally lost a game (versus Detroit) and their lead is now 1 game over the Rangers.

In other division news, the the Halos got a taste of Josh Hamilton checking out mentally in a ballgame when he lost track of the outs in the final inning and got doubled up on the base pads to end the game yesterday in a loss against the 'Stros.  Since Hamilton is fond of comparing himself to Jesus, I wonder if Jesus ever lost track of the number of outs when he was running the bases.

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Rangers Lose 3-1 Versus Mermen

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: How many games are the Rangers going to win when they score only 1 run?  Not many, including this one.  Murph and Beltre continue to struggle in the middle of the batting order.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Yu had a good, albeit wasted performance.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Murph is batting worse than Moreland yet he's #5 in the order.  Is it time yet to move Murph down the order and move Pierzynski, batting well over .300, up?

Oh, and by the way, the freakin' A's have now won 9 straight and lead the division by 2 over the Rangers.

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Rangers Win Ugly Versus Seattle in Opener Last Night

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: Grimm looked rough on the mound.  And not helping matters the Rangers managed only 4 runs on a 11 hits.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Even though he looked rough Grimm managed to only give up 2 runs, keeping the Rangers in it.  And Everyday Joe Ortiz came in and looked good again giving up only 1 hit and 0 ER's.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: The A's have picked up right where they left off last year, are on an 8 game winning streak and lead your Rangers by 1 game going into today's action.

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Rangers' Offense Stunk Up the Joint...

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: ...and they lose the finale/getaway game 2-0 to the Rays.  The offense managed only 5 hits.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: And the Rangers wasted a good (even great) pitching performance by Doogie Holland.  He gave up only 2 runs on 5 hits.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: The poor offense was without Pierzynski and Berkman who had the day off.  I guess that's a some type of excuse for a goose egg.

Next up Seattle.

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Welcome to the Majors Mr. Tepesch!

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: The 4-8 batters in the Rangers' lineup were a combined 0-fer through 7.  Not good. (Although Beltre did have a ground ball out, RBI in the 5th)

Aggressive base running got Kins thrown out at 2B trying to stretch a single into a double behind Martin going from 1B to 3B on Kins' hit.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Rangers' rookie starting pitcher Nick Tepesch gave up only 1 run on 4 hits in 7.1 IP.  Not too shabby.  And his ground balls to fly balls ratio was 16-2.  Excellent, especially in the hometown park.

Oh yeah, the Rangers won 6-1 behind  young Mr. Tepesch's pitching and good offense from the 1-3 (Kins, Elvis & Fat Elvis) & 9 (Leonys Martin) hitters in the Rangers' lineup.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: I, as others have done, compared Joe Ortiz to Everyday Eddie Guardado yesterday.  So today I'm going to compare Nick Tepesch to another lanky right handed starter that didn't have an overwhelming fastball but did induce a lot of ground balls and looked calm, cool and collected on the mound.  Yup, I'm going to compare Tepesch to Orel Hershiser.  At the very least Tepesch sure did remind me of Hershiser tonight.  Bulldog, Jr.???

The Rangers have won the first 3 series of the year.  You know what that means?  Yup.  They're on pace to win each series this season.

Speaking of on pace...what's it about batting in the 3-slot for the Texas Rangers in the beginning of a season?  Berkman is batting .480 in the young season.

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Welcome to Baseball Town, TX Tampa Bay Rays! Rangers Win 5-4

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: The way our local announcers, Busby and Tom, "TAG", Grieve, were talking during the first 5 innings you would have thought Ogando was getting beaten like a drum.  In fact he only gave up 1 ER on 3 hits through 6.1 IP.  Sometimes I have no idea what game they are watching.  Frustrating to listen to announcers do that, much less our hometown guys.  Usually it's the national broadcasters that do stuff like that.  Oh, and the whole time Busby and TAG are bagging on Ogando they're praising the pitching of the Rays!  The Rays, who at the time were losing the game 3-1 in a pitching duel!  To Ogando!  Again, frustrating.

Also, Ogando seemed to be on a short leash since Wash pulled him after 6.1 IP, with less than 90 pitches thrown, having given up only 3 hits and 1 ER.  Sure, in the 6th he had 2 on with 1 out, but what happened to letting your pitchers pitch their way out of trouble?  Wash?

Kins' poor awareness at times on the base pads reared its ugly head again, he got caught in no man's land in the first inning.  This is a long running (pun intended) problem for Kins dating back to last season.

Kirkman is our setup guy?  He came in with a 5-1 lead in the 8th.  He started the 8th with 6 straight balls and eventually was pulled for Lowe, with the bases loaded and 1 out.  Then Lowe walked in a run and gave up another run on a fielder's choice making it a much more tense 5-3 ballgame.  This is an ongoing experiment/adventure.  Maybe Joe Ortiz (see below) will/should get a shot at being the setup guy.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining:  Beltre is starting to come out of a mini slump he was in to start off the season, driving in a first inning run.

Pierzynski and Moreland went yard back to back in the bottom of 4.  Moreland went 3-3, staring to come out of his early season slump.

As mentioned above, Ogando was lifted for the young reliever Joe Ortiz with 2 on and 1 out in the 6th.  Ortiz got out of the inning without giving up any runs.  And Ortiz was perfect in 1.2 IP.  At least one media-type has referenced that Ortiz reminds some of an Everyday Eddie Guardado-type pitcher, especially because of the way he carries himself on the mound.  And not just because he has the same "body-type", is a lefty, a reliever, and has a Latino surname like Everyday Eddie.  Everyday Eddie, Jr.?

Elvis drove in some insurance runs (2) in bottom of 7 to give the Rangers a 5-1 lead.  The Rangers would need those runs given Kirkman and Lowe's adventures (see above) in the 8th.

Nathan pitched the 9th and after a bit of another adventure (and a terrible called 3rd strike for the final out), got the 300th save of his career.  Impressive. (Correcting my last post, his last outing against the Halos was not a save opportunity).

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Is it weird that a ball club's name is associated with a the body of water adjacent to a metropolitan area?  I think so.  Tampa, Flordia is a town.  Tampa Bay is the body of water in the Gulf of Mexico next to the city.  The Rays don't play in the bay.  They play on land, in Tampa, Florida.  The whole thing is very unstable.  Of course the Rays learned it from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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DFW Metroplex's new nickname? Baseball Town, USA

I like our new nickname.  Thanks Hambone.

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Rangers Beat Halos 7-3, Win Series

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: The wind was jet streaming out to right field, which, as the national ESPN announcers pointed out about 27 times before first pitch, could help the visiting team.  Yu got off to a little bit of shaky start in the top of the first giving up 2 runs.

Wash pulled Yu due to a blister that affected him throwing his change-up after 5 IP.  In the 6th he was due to face the bottom third of the of the Halos' order with righties due up, instead lefty Robbie Ross came in.  Why not throw a righty?  Ross put two on before getting out of the inning.  Also the blister only affected Yu's change-up and he had only thrown 85 pitches.  So why not just have Yu not throw the change?

For at least one game, Hamilton broke out of his slump with a single and a double.  I also question if you can call it only a "slump" since it dates back to last June.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: The wind was jet streaming out to right field, which of course could help your Rangers and did.  Berkman and Murph went yard back to back in the first putting 3 runs on the board. Soto, giving Pierzynski a breather behind the plate, had a double and then scored on a hit by Kins.  Speaking of Kins, what did I say?  It's an odd (versus even) year.  Kins also had a 3 run homer to increase the Rangers' lead from 1 run to 4 in the bottom of 6.

Here is yet another example of Yu being strong to very strong: in the top of 3, with no outs, Yu walked Pujols and then gave up a double to Hamilton.  Pujols held at 3B.  Then Yu struck out Trumbo and Kendrick and induced an inning ending fly ball to CF.  Nice.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Pujols doesn't look right when he's running.  In fact it's painful to watch him run.

Why Leonys Martin instead of Gentry in CF?  Again I know it's a small sample size but right now Gentry is playing better this year.  And given how well Gentry played last year for the club I would have thought it'd be his spot to lose.

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Harry Has a Rough Start, Rangers Lose to Halos 8-4

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: Matty Harrison got roughed up in the first couple of innings, giving up two HRs in the first and staking the Halos a 4-0 lead.  That and an ER Harry gave up in the 2nd inning would be all the Angels would need.  Although Murph had a hit he's still struggling to step up, batting .133 in the young season.  Oh yeah, Pujols had 2 HRs and was intentionally walked 3 times, the first time that's happened for an American League player since Ike was president.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Moreland got off the snide, hitting a homer for his first and only hit of the year.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: We again saw the Hamilton we were used to seeing everyday at the end of last season as he went 0-4 with 2 SOs (albeit with 1 BB and 1 R).

This is the exact kind of game I'm afraid the Rangers are going to find incredibly difficult to win.  If the Rangers' pitching doesn't hold up then it doesn't seem you can count on the offense to put up 5+ runs in a ballgame.  At least it doesn't from the small sample size we've seen so far.

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Rangers Beat Hamilton's Halos 3-2 In Home Opener

Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: Poor, poor Mitch Moreland is still without a hit in this young season.  The offense only managed 3 runs on 12 hits, not a great run to hit ratio.

Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Nellie, AJ Pierszynski, Kins and Berkman continue to produce at the plate.  Doogie, the Dutch Oven, Holland looked great and Nathan closed the game out.

Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: Josh Hamilton made his return to Texas and he looked about the same as he did towards the end of last season.  He swung at a 3rd strike away in the dirt, he first-swung and popped out, he misplayed a ball in the corner and he seemed to lollygag on a ball popped up to shallow right field that fell between him and the Halos' first baseman.  Oh yeah, and he was without a hit, sound familiar?

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