Rangers Fall in Final Exhibition: Chevy Line Drive to Round Rock Recap

Last night Derek Holland pitched his final tune-up before his first start of the season scheduled for Tuesday against Seattle. The Duch Oven went five innings allowed six hits and a run in the final exhibition game this season against the team’s Triple-A affiliate the Round Rock Express. Round Rock came out ahead in this one with the final score 4 – 3 in favor of the Express. Holland looked good, more comfortable than he did in recent outings, Dutch was able to go out there and get his work in with no issues, whether he was playing a minor league team or not either way he looked solid.

A scary moment came in the game when presumable future call-up Michael Kirkman currently playing for the Express was hit by a line drive by Nelson Cruz in the second inning. Luckily no x-rays were needed and it turned out to only be a bruise.

Darren O’Day gave us more cause for concern in the eighth inning giving up 2 runs one of them being a solo-jack from Chad Tracy. This spring has not been kind to O’Day who has continued to give up home runs, at this point I’m not comfortable at all with him being brought into any game that matters.

Another storyline this spring was Mitch Moreland vs Chris Davis for the 1st base position with the big club, ultimately the club decided on Moreland. Davis did find his way to first base in the game and made for an awkward moment between the two (okay..so it probably wasn’t that awkward but I took a good picture).

That’s it for the game, the fun stuff is after the jump.

I was invited to attend this game by Chevrolet of Texas as I had mentioned previously on the site, this was the Chevy Line Drive to Round Rock and I along with Joe Siegler, Joshua McMurray and Patrick McCullough all road tripped together to the game.

Our ride was a Chevy Equinox and Josh picked me up in Waco and we met up with the other guys in Round Rock. We grabbed some food and headed out to the Dell Diamond. We did a round-table regarding the upcoming season with Matt from Chevy and as soon as it’s out there on the interwebs we will link to it here.

The game was a blast, we had seats on the 1st base side of home plate on the 3rd row. Every Ranger who came up to bat was right in front of us and was able to hear everything we said. The game started off right when we got a smirk from Elvis as we made our MVP chants in his direction. Later in the game the young girls next to us told Yorvit Torrealba that he was their favorite player and he turned around and waved at us. Despite my best Go Baylor and “Sic Em Bears” chants David Murphy was focused and wouldn’t turn around.

The highlight of the game was when Josh Hamilton came up, the girls starting yelling for him and he turned around to talk and pose for a moment. One of the girls asked him to do his Justin Bieber impression to which he responded “I don’t have his haircut!”

This is what makes minor league baseball so much fun, access to the players great fans and goofy infield games. This was my first opportunity to go to the Dell Diamond and it really measured up with other parks I have been to, if you have an opportunity to check out a game make sure you do.

-Jonathan