Season record: 9-10
Week 3 Record: 5-2
Series Record: 3-3
This week had a lot of firsts. First series sweep, first walk-offs, first winning week, and the first Kela appearance of the season.
I’m still trying to figure out the best format of these weekly reviews and since last week someone asked if I could include series records. I decided to not only include that but go review by series. Also since we’ve played a lot of west coast games, this might be easier since those games are usually a blur.
Loss @ Oakland
The first game against Oakland seems like forever ago but it was the Rangers only win of the series and easily one of Griffin’s best games. Six innings pitched, just one hit, one walk and eight strikeouts. Just when it finally seemed like Griffin was on track... he’s put on 10 day DL for gout... just their luck.
Kela also got his inning of work after being called up because Dyson was put on DL. A quick 10 pitch inning to close that game.
Game two was the Darvish game. Or as I’ll refer to it as “the game plan loss.”
Game three was the Martin game. Fast Martin AKA the best Martin, did not show up. This was also the game in which Hauschild gave up three home runs, so the Rangers gave him back to the Astros.
4 game sweep against Kansas
I tweeted before this series that I was just hoping for a series split, I just wanted to talk about at least three wins instead of two but didn’t want to put any pressure on the guys. But here we are talking about a four game sweep and not one but two walk-offs.
That first game sure had me worried about the series though. If you just looked at the box score, I guess you could assume a pitching dual but eh I wouldn’t go that far. Cashner pitched six innings and gave up just three hits but he walked four. Rangers also left 12 on base.
That bullpen though. 7 innings, one hit, one walk, 11 strikeouts. That’s the kind of bullpen I expected from the Rangers from the beginning.
Now this game had me worried not only because it was 0-0 and went 13 innings and the timely hitting was dead but having the bullpen pitch those innings made me insanely nervous. Anyone else?
Luckily, starting pitching really turned it around this series. Hamels going eight in game two, Martinez going seven in game three with a no-hitter for 5.1. Then Darvish going eight in the finale. This is the kind of series the Rangers needed from their pitchers.
Hopefully this week is a sign of good things to come, especially against the Twins who just used Chris Gimenez out of the bullpen in Sunday’s game against the Tigers.
P.S. best gif from the Oakland series
P.S.S. your 2017 power hitter for the Texas Rangers, Elvis Andrus