Game 101: Another Winnable Loss

Tonight’s game featured a pretty reasonable 3-3 score before Anaheim’s furious 6th inning barrage that knocked out starter Roy Oswalt and probably scarred poor Robbie Ross for life.

Albert Pujols led off the inning with a double, which was followed by a homerun, a fly out, five singles, a strikeout, an intentional walk, a grand slam, and a ground out.

The 3 Angel runs had ballooned to 12 and the game was pretty much over.

More than being just another loss, this may mark the end of the Oswalt experiment in Texas. After not pitching for almost 2 weeks because of his bothersome back, Oswalt put up 5.1 innings of 11-hit, 8-run, 3-homerun baseball.

He might have enough left in him to eat some innings down the stretch, but can he be relied upon in a game that really matters?

Also of note…

• Ross was charged with 4 of the Angels’ 15 runs and Michael Kirkman picked up 3 runs of his own in 3 innings of work.
• Both of the homeruns in the 6th were hit by Kendrys Morales, who is a switch-hitter. Interestingly enough, each of his homeruns came from opposite sides of the plate, which is only the 3rd time ever that a player has done such a thing in the same inning.
  Sometimes I hate history.
• If there’s one positive to take away from this game, it was the Ranger offense breaking out for 8 runs of their own.
  Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, and David Murphy all had doubles. Jamilton, Cruz, and Mike Napoli all had homeruns.
  The team as a whole went 3-for-7 with RISP, which is a good sign.
• The offense will need to stay hot if they’re going to do anything with Jared Weaver tomorrow. Texas is the only team to beat Weaver this season, but lost to him 10 days ago in Anaheim.

Derek Holland will take the hill at 7:05 Arlington time on FSSW.

Press on, Rangers fans.

(Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @twbbg. Per usual, thanks to Baseball Reference for their invaluable resources.)