Texas-Seattle: Rangers Pitching Sweep M's on the Road

In the first game of the Rangers-Mariners series, Texas and Seattle sent their aces to the mound, and the Ranger’s Kevin Millwood out dueled King Felix.

In game two, both teams again sent their best to the mound, Vicente Padilla, for the Rangers and Erik Bedard for the Mariners.

Padilla has been struggling so far this season for the Rangers, but his track record shows that he can turn it around. Bedard is off to a good start this year after a disastrous 2008 season.

Bedard continued his hot start to the season by going seven strong innings, striking out seven and allowing only seven hits. His only blemish came with one out in the seventh when Nelson Cruz blasted a pitch into the left-field seats.

However great Bedard’s performance was, yet another Mariner's pitcher was outdone by the Ranger's hurler. Padilla went eight innings, giving up only one unearned run (Ian Kinsler fielding error in the sixth). He threw only 102 pitches and allowed just one hit.

The key to Padilla’s success was the fact that he got 16 ground ball outs and forced the Mariners to hit into three double plays.

At times Padilla can look lost and confused on the mound and be one of the most inconsistent pitchers in all of baseball. But he always seems to follow those performances with outings like this one.

The two teams each scored only the single runs through nine innings of baseball, with the Rangers batting a miserable 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position.

But that is what is great about baseball, you can have a horrible outing through nine innings, but all you need is one at bat or one inning to turn it into a great day.

That inning was the Rangers' tenth inning.

The inning started out bad for the M's after only two pitches. Reliever Shawn Kelley replaced David Aardsma, but after two pitches he fell to the ground with what seemed to be a groin injury. 

So an already depleted Seattle bullpen who threw seven innings of relief against Oakland two days prior, needed Denny Stark to pitch them out of the tenth.

He looked great through two batters, Elvis Andrus and Michael Young each lined out to right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, and the M’s were one pitch away from getting out of the inning.

But four straight singles from Andruw Jones, Hank Blalock, Marlon Byrd, and Cruz scored two runs for a 3-1 lead.

After a Chris Davis walk, catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia came to the plate with the bases loaded. He then blasted a 2-2 pitch to deep center field for his second career grand slam, as the Rangers completed a six run frame.

Seattle would score one in the bottom of the inning, but the Rangers would get the two game sweep in Seattle with a 7-2 win in ten innings.

With the win, the Rangers have pulled to within a half-game of the AL West leading Mariners, improved their division record to 3-1, and are taking a four game winning streak to Oakland.

The Rangers start another two game series tonight at 9:05 CT in Oakland with Scott Feldman (1-0) takes on Dan Giese (0-2), newly acquired off waivers from the Yankees.