Great game last night. The Rangers now have the third-best record in the A.L. And I'll be heading up to Arlington today to see if they can complete the sweep.
Hank Blalock says he was looking fastball against Brandon Morrow and was just looking for something he could turn on.
Blalock's double gave the win to C.J. Wilson, who was a little shaky yesterday but who also would have thrown two scoreless were it not for a throwing error in his second inning of work. There was a lot of flaming of Ron Washington for leaving C.J. out there for two innings yesterday, but really, I don't know if he had a ton of other options.
Frankie Francisco wasn't available. Eddie Guardado and Darren O'Day had already been used. Derek Holland was probably not available after pitching the day before.
That left Jason Jennings and Kris Benson as your options out of the bullpen, and if you use Jennings yesterday, he's not available today. I think, given the situation, you have to run C.J. out there for two innings, and I think the complaints about him being out there for two innings run more along the lines of "C.J. sucks and shouldn't ever be out there" rather than any rational complaint about the bullpen usage.
In addition, C.J. now has a 4.20 ERA on the season, and a FIP of 4.54. He's not been great this season, but he's also not the disaster that some seem to think.
T.R. Sullivan says that Frankie, meanwhile, is reporting much improvement after a good throwing session yesterday, and he could be back in the closer role on Friday.
Jeff Miller has a detailed breakdown of yesterday's game, including Chris Davis's analysis of the two close plays at first that went against the Rangers, and Brandon McCarthy's thoughts on the three homers the M's hit against him.
Jeff Wilson has updates on Willie Eyre and Dustin Nippert, who are both on the d.l., along with this update on the team's TV ratings:
The Rangers on Tuesday drew their highest rating for an FSN Southwest game this season, averaging a 3.25 in Dallas-Fort Worth. It’s the best showing since Aug. 7, 2008.
The high rating follows a trend: ratings for 21 games on FSN Southwest this season have increased by 98 percent over last year, the largest spike among any major league team. The Rangers are averaging a 2.16, up from 1.09 in 2008.