Rangers "Walk-Off" With a Sweep Of The Mariners

Coming off the excitement from the night before when the Rangers defeated the Mariners in walk-off fashion.  Hank "The Hammer" Blalock's two-RBI double off of closer Brandon Morrow in the bottom of the eleventh inning sent the Ballpark in Arlington into a state of pandemonium.

Wins like that don't happen every day, so there is no way it could happen again, right?

Texas and Seattle played a day game on Thursday, the Mariners looking to avoid the sweep and the Rangers attempting to improve their record against Seattle this season to 5-0.

Seattle sent their ace, King Felix, to the mound to face-off against Matt Harrison and his 19 scoreless inning streak.

Felix Hernandez started the year off 4-0 before losing last week to the Rangers and Kevin Millwood, the young phenom definitely was looking for some revenge for that outing.

Harrison was simply looking for zeros, the only two pitchers in baseball this season with longer scoreless streaks are Zack Grienke and Hernandez.

Hernandez who struggled in his first outing against the Rangers was on today, going seven scoreless innings, alllowing only four hits, none for extra bases, and striking out six.

Harrison keep his scoreless inning streak going for three more innings, until the fourth when the Mariners put two on him.  His streak ended at 22 innings, tying Hernandez mark for the second longest of the season.

However, Matt would again complete what he had started, pitching another complete game (his second consecutive), allowing only five hits and striking out seven.  Three of the five hits he allowed came in the fourth when the Mariners scored their two runs.

Another superb outing from Harrison, but going into the ninth he was on the hook for the loss, unless the bats could rescue him.

Again Seattle sent their closer Morrow to the mound looking for some redemption after the night before, and as fate would have it the first batter he faced was The Hammer.

Like the night before, Morrow used 96 and 97 mph fastballs and worked the count full, when The Hammer took the payoff pitch for a ride.

Hank's 10th home run of the season was a bomb eight rows up in the right field upper deck home run porch.  Though it was only a solo home run and the Rangers still trailed 2-1, the feeling around the park and in the home dugout was of another rally.

Texas rallied from behind three times in the game the night before, won in walk-off fashion, and it seemed as though it was happening again.

To bring the team back down to Earth the next batter Nelson Cruz flied out to shallow center on the first pitch and Morrow was two outs away from avoiding disaster.

David Murphy batted next as the potential tying run, he would see only fastballs as well from Morrow.  With the count 2-2, Murphy lined a double down the right field line and the stadium was hopping.

Now the Rangers had the tying run in scoring position with only one out and Chris Davis coming to the plate.

Last night Davis set a new franchise record striking out in 21 consecutive games, so far in this contest he had yet to strikeout.  Morrow again would only throw fastballs looking to get the free-swinging Davis to extend his streak.

But on the 2-1 pitch, Davis would later say he was looking for a fastball high in the strike zone, he got his pitch and "Crush" Davis blasted the ball to deep center field.

As soon as he hit it Davis flipped his bat and began his trot, a no doubt shot that won the game in walk-off fashion for the second time in less than 24 hours.

With the 3-2 victory the Rangers completed the sweep of the Mariners, improved their record to 20-14, and will now face the red-hot Angels.

The Angels are still only 1.5 games behind the Rangers as they took two of three games at home from the Red Sox.

The Rangers come into the series winning four straight and a 10-2 record over the past two weeks.

The Angels also enter the series having won nine of the last eleven games.

Both teams do have some potent offense but the real story line will likely come from the pitching match-ups.  Friday Joe Saunders (5-1, 2.66) takes on Ranger ace Kevin Millwood (3-3, 2.92).  Saturday John Lackey makes his first start of the season for the Halos against Vicente Padilla (2-2, 4.97), who is coming off back-to-back one-hitters.  Finally in the series finale Jered Weaver (3-1, 2.45) will take the mound against  Scott Feldman (2-0, 4.85).

This is a big series as both teams attempt to make statements about the upcoming race for the divisional title.