In what seems like an act of desperation to avoid being without a catcher, the Rangers traded Michael Main for Bengie Molina.
The courts are signing up for an eBay account right now so they can throw the Rangers up for auction. No reserve! Buy It Now price set to whatever the creditors want!
Then the Rangers lost to the Angels after having an 8th inning that started out looking very Angel-y with soft hits, strange breaks, and bloops only to end up very July 01 2010 Texas Ranger-y.
Thank God It's Friday.
- This is still the Rangers division.
- Going into this series with the Angels I wanted 2 of 3. A Rangers sweep wasn't realistic because most teams don't get swept at home and that's especially true for the Angels. An Angels sweep of the Rangers would have been a blow, but I didn't really expect that it would happen. And even so, the Rangers still would have lead the division, but it would have been a clear message from the Angels that things certainly aren't over. I am reluctantly satisfied with winning 1 of 3, however, especially since both losses were by only one run. While the Rangers lost the series, nothing happened that made think the Angels will overtake your Texas Rangers.
- On the flip side of the argument, to have the games the Rangers lost be so close, it's hard not to think that the Rangers let a couple of winnable games slip away.
- With that said, thank you Vladimir Guerrero. Thank you for your dominance. You averted a crisis. I'll probably remember what Vlad did in game two of this series for a long time if this Rangers season ends up being something special. I was able to come to terms with the emotional abuse Vlad dispensed to me, a Rangers fan, year after year as I watched him almost single-handedly beat the team that he helped make the most despised. I know I've said before that I had forgotten that Vlad hasn't always been a Ranger, but the game on Wednesday was truly his accession to Ranger lore.
- Michael Young should have scored on the passed ball last night. There's honestly no other way of looking at it. After the game Young responded to the play: "Because it was a fastball, I wasn’t able to get that far off the bag in the first place," Young said. "From third base, you don’t really have the luxury of seeing which direction it kicks—unless it kicks right back to you. And from my angle, I thought it kicked right back to Mathis. If I had an easy read, I would have been gone. But it was a tough read." I don't know where else you could have had a better read, but he was certainly right about not having a good jump. It's worth noting as well that Nelson Cruz was screaming for him to come in. I love Michael Young (the obligatory proclamation a Rangers fan must make to say the following) but once again, Michael Young shows that his reaction time is pretty poor.
- Not to pile on Michael Young, but another critical moment in this series that he failed to deliver in came in the Top of the 8th of the first game of the series. Earlier in that game, in the 6th inning, Bobby Abreu battled Darren Oliver to get the count full and forced Oliver to give him a pitch to hit. And when he got it, he delivered with a bases clearing three RBI double. Young, on the other hand, after Elvis singled to load the bases in the 8th, worked the count to 2-0 and then grounded out to short on a pitch Fernando Rodney was begging him to swing at. Those two at-bats were the ballgame.
- It was going to be against the Angels that Darren Oliver was going to have his first mini-melt down in a long while. You could just feel it. When he came in and immediately gave up a walk, you could just tell the Angels were about to Angel all over D.O.
- Omar Beltre wasn't great in his first big league start but he showed enough to make me think he can pitch in the majors. While he was clearly nervous early, and walked too many batters overall, he still missed bats with his pitchers and struck out six. More than that though, the fact that he and Ogando were brought back from legal death and allowed the chance to get to where they are right now is one of the really great stories of many from this season. One day an amazing book is going to be written on the 2010 Texas Rangers.
So what did we learn in Anaheim?
Nobody likes Anaheim.
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