A lonestar in california

The Texas Rangers have won 5 series in a row. But they have yet to sweep one this year, unless you count a two-game set up in Toronto on April 16-17. Case in point: they couldn’t finish off the A’s on Sunday in Arlington, instead getting beat by a final of 12-6.

It wasn’t quite as bad as the final score suggested, though – the Rangers did at least make it interesting, making a rally (albeit short-lived) after Sidney Ponson gave up 4 runs in the first inning.

Ponson had his first rough outing since being brought up from the minors April 27th. After allowing just one earned run in each of his first three outings, Sir Sidney hit the second batter of the game, and then gave up a double, single and 3-run homer to allow the A’s to jump out to a 4-0 lead. But Ponson would settle down, and the Rangers would make it a ballgame.

Milton Bradley hit and RBI double in the bottom of the first, and Ian Kinsler singled in a run in the second. Then with the bases loaded and 2 out in the third, Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit a 2-run single to right to tie the game – but got thrown out trying to leg it into a double, ending the inning.

Josh Hamilton would gave the Rangers a short-lived lead by tripling home Frank Catalanotto in the 4th, but Ponson, who recovered to toss four scoreless innings after the debacle in the first, ran out of gas in the 6th. He walked three on the inning, including walking in the tying run before he was removed for Franklyn German, who gave up the go-ahead sac fly to Frank Thomas.

Michael Young would tie it again at 6 with an RBI single the next half inning, but in the top of 7th, things fell apart for good. With runners on the corners and no outs, Franklyn German had Mark Ellis picked off on a steal attempt. But German failed to take pay enough attention to the runner at third, Bobby Crosby, who would break for home while Ellis was in the rundown. Frank Catalanotto gunned the ball to the plate, but it was late, and Saltalamacchia couldn’t handle it, as Crosby scored and Ellis wound up on second anyway, in what would be scored as a double steal. From there, the A’s never looked back, tacking on another run that inning, and again in the 8th, before hammering Eddie Guardado for three in the 9th to officially make it a blowout.

While the winning streak ended, and the A’s racked up the runs late, there where some positives to take away from his one though: Jarrod Saltalamacchia finally had a decent day at the plate, going 1-2 withhis clutch hit in the third and two walks, perhaps a sign that he might break out of this 2-16 slump he’s been in since the start of the Seattle series. Josh Hamilton also went 2-5 with a double and a triple, and looks to be breaking out of the recent slump he’s been in as well.

Other important news: Kevin Millwood has indeed gone on the 15-day DL with his groin strain, and is now saying he felt a “stabbing pain” on his pitch to Jack Cust Saturday:

“I felt it on the 1-0 pitch to Cust,” Millwood said after the game. “I tried to throw another pitch and I felt the same thing. It was a bit of a stabbing pain, even though I hadn’t been stabbed.”

In his stead, the Rangers have added Doug Mathis to the 40-man roster, and purchased him from AAA Oklahoma. Mathis was Texas bullpen Sunday, and will start off doing long relief work, as the Rangers will skip Millwood’s spot in the rotation until May 20th. Once the time comes though, Mathis will probably be one of the favorites to make the 1 or 2 starts that will be required in Millwoods absence, assuming he’s not worn out from some long relief outing a couple days before. the 24 year-old Mathis had been 5-0 with a 3.55 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP at Okalahoma, so I’m interested to see how he’ll do – he doesn’t profile to be much more than a back-of-the-rotation guy, like Luis Mendoza and AJ Murray, but these days we can never have enough of those.

The club also slid Kazuo Fukumori though waivers to clear him off the 40-man roster. This wasn’t to get Doug Mathis onto the roster, as he is taking up Ben Broussard’s vacated spot, but rather the Rangers apparently want to keep their options open by keeping only 39 men on the roster - either that or they have impending plans for somebody in the minors who is not on the roster, such as Eric Hurley. Perhaps I’m reading too far into this, but it’s kind of surprising to me that the Rangers would seemingly give up on their high-profile Japanese signee after just 4 appearances in the big leagues. Of course, in those 4 appearances, Fukumori allowed 9 runs on 11 hits and 4 walks (in 4 innings) and looked absolutely terrible, but he currently has a 1.59 ERA and a 0.71 WHIP, along with 10 K’s in 11.1 innings for Oklahoma. Not that I’m a Fukumori believer, but this move still intrigues me.

I’m running late here again, so for the sake of time, I’ll have condense everything else to quick hits (not that there was anything else really worth discussing tonight anyway): Ron Washington says Brandon Boggs is a “spark plug”… for once, Ron and I agree… the pink bats used on Mothers Day every year are becoming quite a hit with the Rangers… and Marlon Byrd was 3-4 in his second rehab game in OKC, after going 0-4 with 4 K’s in his first.

Today it’s a rematch of Vicente Padilla vs. Erik Bedard. Last time, Padilla tossed 7 shutout innings to outduel Bedard, who only gave up 2 runs in the same amount of frames. This time, there’s some bad blood between the team, though – Richie Sexson is off serving his suspension (which he got knocked down to 5 days on appeal) so he won’t be in the lineup to bean, but with Padilla on the mound, you never know what might happen. Hopefully he’ll play it cool – the best revenge he can dish out would be another superb outing.