Thoughts On Martin Perez And AL All-Star Rosters Announced

I didn’t get a chance to watch last night’s game live. The mix of real life and moving doesn’t lend itself to Saturday evening games, unfortunately.

However, better late than never, I was able to watch the MLB.tv Condensed Game and thought Martin Perez’s first career start went a lot like A.J. Griffin’s start the other day for Oakland.

Perez pitched into the sixth inning, striking out five, giving up six hits (including one homerun), two runs and one walk.

He was able to use the off-speed stuff to get strikeouts, and while there might have been a wide strike zone yesterday, he had swing-and-miss stuff and that was impressive. You couldn’t help but notice some similarities between his start and Justin Grimm’s first start. The strikeouts, the help from the offense and the win. Not to mention both were on Saturday evenings on Fox. And both were against 2013 AL West teams.

The offense once again was a little sputtered at times but the good news was, they were given extra opportunities by the Oakland defense and took advantage of them. Josh Hamilton with a big three-run homerun to pull away really helped Ron Washington manage the bullpen as well getting work to Michael Kirkman and the recently recalled Yoshinori Tateyama who seems to have gotten some confidence back starting his outing with back-to-back strikeouts.

All-Star Rosters Announced: Hamilton, Mike Napoli and Adrian Beltre will be starters for the American League in the 2012 All-Star Game in Kansas City. Elvis Andrus, Ian Kinsler Matt Harrison and Joe Nathan also made the team as reserves. Yu Darvish is on the ballot for the final roster spot. The seven all-stars is a Rangers record. Darvish on the team would obviously extend that record.