A lonestar in california

So… it’s been awhile. Far too long actually, since I sat down and attempted a post. I suppose some of you are wondering what happened to me – well, simply put the Rangers took an unexpected nosedive, and so did my inspiration and will to write. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been bandwagoning (I do take a sort of masochistic pride in the fact that I’ll sit through as much of every Ranger game as I can, no matter how bad it gets) I think I just honestly needed a break from blogging. Now the challenge will be getting myself back into the rhythm of writing and posting on a regular basis - I don’t know if I’ll be able to post after every gamelike I have earlier this season, but I’ll post as regularly as I possible.

Thanks of course are in order to any and all of my readers who haven’t given up on me during my absence - next time I take a “break” I’ll make sure to at least have the decency to inform ya’ll of it (hopefully though, I won’t be doing that until at least the offseason). But enough yakking – time to get down to business.

The Rangers, for all the tough times they havesuffered through over this past month have just slapped a nice little bow on their first sweep of the 2008 season in Kansas City last night. It’s been an important turnaround series for the pitching staff, which had come into Kansas City sporting a 6.45 ERA for their last 17 games (of which the Rangers had lost 14). But Scott Feldman put together a quality start on Monday, Kevin Millwood went the distance (for his second straight start) on Tuesday night and Matt Harrisoncompleted the sweep with 6.2 innings of 2-run ball last night as he outdueled Brian Bannister for a 3-2 win.

It’s worth noting of course that the anemic Kansas City offense that they faced is second to last in the AL in runs per game (4.07) but that doesn’t change the fact that this has to be a much-needed morale boost for this team after their 3-for-17 swoon:

“This is a great sign that even though we let ourselves fall out of the race and the wild card, we know we need to play with some pride and get back to where we were three weeks ago,” reliever Jamey Wright said. “Play well and have some fun and get back to what we were doing.”

Harrison wasn’t exactly lights out last night - giving up 7 hits and 2 walks over his 6.2 frames to the Royals isn’t exactly truly shutdown baseball, but what Harrison did do was a good job of wriggling out of jams. He stranded 4 runners in scoring position, including 2 in the 4thafter the Royals had put men on second and third with nobody out. When he left in the 7th, it was with property at second and third again, but Joaquin Benoit took over and struck out David DeJesus to end the threat and preserve Harrison’s line. 

Offensively it was a big night for Jarrod Saltalamacchia and the Rangers young hitters, who picked up the rest of a largely quiet Ranger lineup. Brandon Boggs, who was inserted after Josh Hamilton was a late scratch with anabcessed tooth, hit his 8th home run in the 4th inning and Saltalamacchia unleashed 2 doubles on the night, the second of which came back-to-back with a Chris Davis double in the 7th to tie the game at two.

That’s when the lightning struck – for the second consecutive night, the Royals gave the game away via error, when Brian Bannister somehow managed to drop a  2-out infield popup off the bat of Joaquin Arias. An alert Salty came rumbling around third base and scored on a head-first dive – an almost inexplicable play since #1, infield popups are dropped about once every decade, and #2 Salty is of course a catcher.

“Didn’t think it was possible,” third base coach Matt Walbeck said. “If Salty hadn’t been running hard the whole way, it never would have happened.”

Salty did have a passed ball last night and somehow lost a laser beam throw from Brandon Boggs that should’ve cut down a run in the 5th inning, but he is now hitting .362 witha .944 OPS since the all star break in his limited playing time as the backup catcher. Gerald Laird on the other hand has regressed toward his mean, hitting .242 with an abysmal .670 OPS since he was handed the full-time starters job again (which might lend further credibility to the theory that Laird only seems to really play well when his playing time is on the line).

This little stint with Laird as the starting catcher has been fun (okay, not really) but I think it’s safe to say Salty has earned himself some more of that semi-regular (platoon) playing time again. Or, let me put it this way: it’s absolutely senseless for the Rangers not to give their 23 year-old catcher more playing time now that he’s started to hit again and now that their wildcard hopes are down the drain. Whether you see him as offseason trade bait or the catcher of the future, they need to allow Salty to salvage as much of his 2008 season as he can.

Getting back to the game, the Rangers also bore witness to a small milestone last night: Frankie Francisco’s first big league save. You probably already know Frankie moved into the closers role this week (something I believe I’ve suggested in the past) when the Rangers traded Eddie Guardado to the Twins for relief prospect Mark Hamburger, and last night was his debut in the role. And even though he was only facing the Royals 7-8-9 hitters you really couldn’t have asked for a better debut: he threw 9 pitches, struck out two and got a ground ball to close the game out. After the game, Frankie stated that he his new goal as closer will be to just go after them – exactly what he did his first time out:

“Since they told me, I’ve been thinking about it and I just wanted to go out there, take a breath, trust my stuff and go after the hitters,” Francisco said.

“I didn’t want to waste any pitches. The next time I want to go about it the same way. I don’t want to give them any chance to use strategy. I don’t want to joke around with the hitters

Well, he’s certainly got the right idea… let’s hope we continue to see him back it up. After CJ Wilson’s unhealthy debacles, it sure would be nice to see somebody talk about throwing strikes and then actually go out and do it in the closers role - and so far, so good for Frankie even if it was on;y the royals 7-7-9.

I’m afraid I’ve got to cut this short (my first entry back, and I’m already cutting it short) there was some stuff that I wanted to get to, but it’ll have to wait until this afternoon or tomorrow.

Today we’ve got a big game, in more ways that one – number one, it’s going to be Brandon McCarthy’s second big league start this year (after he went four effectively wild innings his first time) and it’s also going to be one of three pilot games for baseball’s new instant replay feature. I really don’t have much of an opinion on instant replay (just so long as they stick to HR and fair/foul calls I’m fine with it) and in all likelihood, all it will actually provide is a topic for the announcers to fill the air with, but games against the Angels are always exciting. Hopefully we’ll carry some of this pitching success from KC over to Anaheim as we’ll probably need it. Now if someone could just wake the offense…