Evan Grant on last night's game

Or is he just not talking, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Blalock quote.

I still can’t get over that thing

Within 5 mintues it’s been re-tweeted about 30 times. It’s going viral!!!

Rudy should be fired. Everyone seems to think he is great but if we can see what is wrong surely he can right? He is still living off his rep from the 90’s playoff teams IMO.

But who can’t argue that you’ve got to take pitches and work the count? The results are wonderful. It’s like going to the bucket in basketball. Yeah, it might be hard to do and it might not be the flashiest way to end up where you need to go but good things happen. In b-ball, driving the paint means either a high percentage shot or freethrows. In baseball, taking pitches means working walks or high pitch counts: either way, the result is good. If you work a walk, you get on base, which is the point of the game. If you don’t work a walk or strikeout after taking 5/6/7 pitches, generally the result is still good because the pitcher had to work that much harder and potentially you can get to the soft underbelly of the bullpen quicker. And if you end up with a hit after taking 5/6/7 pitches, you end up with the best of both worlds.

Mike Maddux said on BaD radio yesterday that people’s misconception of a perfect inning for a pitcher is 3Ks. He argued that 3 1-pitch ground outs is the perfect inning because you throw less and go deeper into ballgames. A major problem with this Rangers team IS that they are getting away from Wash’s philosophy of working counts and simply swinging at first pitches. By getting away from that philosophy, they are falling onto a double edged sword: putting more pressure on themselves by going for big hits on less than optimal counts and also having to face the other teams starter for extended innings.

worked the count well against Dallas Braden, no?

last resort pitchers, Matt Palmer has given up one run in 6 IP, how do they always do this?

he just whiffed on a sand shot…

…and don’t know what the conversation has been, but I do not see how hooking Feldman is defensible.

He’d been great all night prior to that jam. Not good. Great. There were two outs. It was his situation to work out of, and if he were given the chance we’d probably talking about a Rangers win today.

Besides, the guy has a future on this team. Or at least I think so. And in the short term some in the org obviously think so. He needs to be stretched out, then, right? I mean if you want him to start, let him go until he begins to get tired. A little more each time out. I saw no signs of fatigue yesterday.

So they bring in a rookie (a really green one) to face Jim Fucking Thome with the bases full. That’s a BRILLIANT IDEA. If they insisted on yanking Feldman, there’s only one other worse option to go to right now and that would have been Every Day Eddie. I would have taken any other reliever in the pen before Holland, whether they were right or left handed.

Clearly the Rangers suck at working the count and getting on base. They can hit for extra bases. A few of them will hit for a good average. That’s been the norm since their late-nineties heyday. Last year was an exception. Since it was a recent exception I was hoping that they may be able to turn patience into a trend, but with the personnel they have I’m not sure if they’re going to be able to do that unless the coaching staff really, really turns the heat up. They’ve been taught to be aggressive at the plate and it’s that simple. Unfortunately it is not a winning approach for the whole damn lineup to hack like they do.

Whole team is in love with the long ball. You can eat bad pitching alive by hitting home runs, but you will never win consistently against good pitchers by swinging out of your damn shoes every at-bat. To me this is common sense, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why this particular group of very talented hitters haven’t figured it out. It’s crazy.

From last year we know they CAN do it, which makes what’s going on this year even worse.

Some of you will hate me for saying this, but this is why I respect the Yankees and Red Sox. It’s not just their big name players with huge contracts. Even their role players will make the pitcher work. That’s the philosophy of the team, and don’t tell me it can’t be taught. If you get a pitchers pitch, even if it’s a strike, don’t swing at it. Don’t be afraid to strike out. Work the count and get something you can hit, even if you get behind in the count and have — GASP — shorten your swing.

And that’s my rant.

I SO want to see some baseball today! And i decided that i was going to replace wash for just today and i can guarantee a victory. All batters will lay off the first pitch, all night. And if they swing at the first pitch, they can find their asses on the bench. These guys have to be more patient at the plate. We got a solid, best of the year, from Feldman and had SO many chances to tack on extra runs, we just decided to pop up to he infield on first pitch swings. They guy on the team who is struggling the most, CD, was patient and took a walk after going down 0-2. We need more of that and we WILL be more successful. go away rain and GO RANGERS!

They say the entire “bubble” collapsed and there are people trapped inside.

That man should have never been trusted w/ guaranteed money.

game on. no max. we’ll be lucky to score 4…

oh, Raul Ibanez just might be worth that contract, no?

with Evan about the problems the offense is having and that this lineup isn’t the same with Hamilton not in it. However Josh hasn’t really been hitting that well so far this year.

And as many have noticed the real problem is guys like Byrd and Blalock swinging at everything. How is having Josh back in the lineup going to help that? The guy has swung at something like 70% of the pitches he has seen this year. I’m not sure he’s the answer to the problem.