And by "another one" I mean the Rangers.... Jason Jennings looked pretty dang good until the 6th inning (or was it the 5th?)....  Regardless, the bats were quiet again, as a matter of fact Kinsler leads off with a hit, and then we don't get another hit until Broussard goes yard late in the game.... Silva pitched pretty well for the M's.... Now it's the Angels, and we never seem to play well in Anaheim, maybe we can change our luck....

In other baseball news, I guess the big story is Kansas City.... Detroit was all but given the AL pennant before the season, and now they are 3 games behind the AL Central leading Royals!!!  The Nationals are 3-0!!!

I can see it now, the World Series in Kauffman Stadium and the brand new Nationals Park.... At least it's a nice dream huh? :)

Well, I'm going to go for now, try to find one of the two night games on TV somewhere....  There will be more later!!!

Well thanks to our Savior (Josh Hamilton) the Rangers avoided going to 0-2 in 2008.  Hamilton hit his first Rangers homer to give the Rangers a 5-4 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth inning and C.J. Wilson got his first save of 2008.  Is it possible that those two have the worst combination of hairstyles in baseball?

 

How about this, BREAK UP THE ROYALS!!!  As of this afternoon, they were undefeated and two games up on the mighty Detroit Tigers!  Brian Bannister lead the charge for Kansas City, as he combined with two other relievers for a three hitter.

 

Baseball season is back in full swing, can't wait to see two new pitchers for their respective teams going at it tonight, Jason Jennings of the Rangers and Carlos Silva of the Mariners.  Hopefully the defense shows up tonight, it almost cost us the game again.  We'll see what happens!!!

 

More tonight!

Well, the last game of Opening Night 3.0 is officially over now, the Astros fall to San Diego to close out the night.  It was an interesting Opening Day, you get two rain-outs, the Blue Jays and Yankees get postponed as well as the Rockies and Cardinals.  Not to mention the fact that a couple of teams projected to dominate during the regular season fell to inferior teams.  Kansas City beat Detroit, Pittsburgh beat Atlanta in a wild one, Minnesota defeats Torii Hunter and the Angels, and break up the Nationals, they go to 2-0 and they are a half game in front of the Mets.... could they go wire to wire?

This of course is a Rangers blog, so I'll spend a little more time on the Opening Day loss given to us by the Seattle Mariners.  I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that the Rangers need Millwood to revert back to his Cleveland and Atlanta days for Texas to be in good shape.  Well, he did, the problem was that the bullpen was pathetic.  Millwood gave up two runs, neither of which was earned.  He should have been out of the 6th inning when he gave up the 2 runs, but Michael Young (who hit a 1st inning homer) committed an error and things fell apart from there.  Fukumori came in and was ineffective, and luckily Franklyn German came in and stopped the bleeding.  At the plate, I thought the Rangers did not do a bad job, considering Bedard usually strikes everyone out.  Young gets a jack in the 1st inning, and that was it until David Murphy knocked one in later in the game.  The offense MUST be more productive for things to go right.  0-1.  So much for going undefeated.

The beautiful thing about baseball is that tomorrow you get to put on the cleats and do it again.  Vicente Padilla takes the hill for the Rangers, Felix Hernandez for Seattle.  Should be a good one.

Let's see, what else was interesting about today.... I haven't checked all of the stats for every game, but I did get to see bits and pieces of quite a few games.  I saw most of the Kansas City/Detroit game, and I was impressed with Cabrera at the plate, he got his first Tiger homer.  Verlander's stuff was electric, but the bullpen couldn't get it done in the end.  I saw some of the Cubs/Brewers game, but it was scoreless when I stopped watching there.  The most important thing I saw was how trim Carlos Zambrano looked.  If he can hold up throughout the year, I see him winning 17-20 games and winning the Cy Young.  ESPN showed bits and pieces of the Washington/Philadelphia and Arizona/Cincinnati games, and the only thing I really saw during that was Chris Young's homer for the Diamondbacks.  The kid can hit the long ball, but he's got to improve his average this year.

Well, that just about does it for Opening Day 3.0, 1 down for the Rangers, 161 to go.  161-1 won't be so bad I guess ;)

Don't get me wrong, I loved the Red Sox and Athletics meeting up in Tokyo last week.  And I loved the Nationals Opening Night on Sunday.  But it takes away from the special feelings that surround Opening Day when you've already had 3 games played.  The Rangers will take the field today at 5:40 local time today, and by that time there will have been, oh, I don't know, 6 or 7 games completed already.  I just think Opening Day should be Opening Day.  Not the fourth day of games as it will be today.

I'll say this about the first three games though.... HOW EXCITING!!!  The season opener goes extra innings between Boston and Oakland, the second game between the two gives us a dominating performance by Rich Harden, and then Sunday night gives us a walk-off homer in the first game ever at Nationals Park!  If these first three games are any indication of how the season will go, this should be a fun year.  I hope that this season will do a lot in terms of making people forget about the steroid scandals and all of the junk that baseball has in it right now.  Baseball appeared to be one of the few sacred things left in society, and that is gone.  ****, Roger Clemens, who was the latest generation of Texas children's Nolan Ryan, is now an accused steroid user.  What next? The Easter bunny isn't real?

As for the season, let me go ahead and give you all my predictions for the year that I'm sure will go wrong!!!

National League:
East- Phillies
Central- Cubs
West- Diamondbacks
Wild Card- Mets
MVP- Chase Utley
Cy Young- Carlos Zambrano

American League:
East- Yankees
Central- Tigers
West- Mariners
Wild Card- Red Sox
MVP- David Ortiz
Cy Young- Erik Bedard

I'll take the Yankees over the Phillies in the World Series this year, call me crazy, but I think the Yankees young pitching will be enough for them in 2008.  As for the Rangers, I'll go as far as saying I think at WORST they are a 75 win team.  I'll say 80-82 though.

Teams on the Rise: Tampa Bay.  I'm on the bandwagon folks, it's official.  I think the Rays are on to something down in Florida this year.  Carlos Pena, B.J. Upton, Scott Kazmir, James Shields.... They are loaded with young talent...........  The other team on the rise, the Dodgers.  I know, they have a lot of veterans, but they have one of the best managers in baseball, and they have been basically in obscurity for a while.  Furcal will bounce back, Penny will have a big season, and I think they'll challenge for the Wild Card and possibly even the NL West late into the year.  I like the Dodgers.

Well, there it is.... all of my picks, my thoughts on Opening Day Version 2.0, and now it's time to kick back and get ready for Opening Day Version 3.0.  We'll chat again tonight!

Me? A blog? On MLB.com? Sure, why not.  I love baseball, and I love the Texas Rangers.  I think the whole idea of a network of MLB blogs is pretty cool.  There are lots of baseball fans not only around our country, but around the world, and I'm interested to see the thoughts of all of the different people that participate. 

I wanted to do this for a few reasons, I think it would be interested to go back and track my thoughts throughout the course of a whole season, and being a Rangers fan, seeing all of the highs and the lows, although usually there are a lot more lows!

Please comment on any of my entries and let me know what you think, this could be fun!!!