Rangers downed in makeup game

07/20/2006
BOSTON -- On a journey from Toronto to Chicago, it hardly makes geographical sense to have a layover in Boston. However, the Rangers had to play the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Thursday to make up a game that had already been rained out twice.
With the rain refusing to make another appearance, the Rangers might have wished it had.
"We don't make excuses like that," Rangers third baseman Hank Blalock said. "We showed up [and] everybody felt fine. We can't use that as an excuse. It wasn't that big of a deal. It was about an hour flight over here. We got here in plenty of time to prepare for the game and we just got beat."
After two consecutive pitchers' duels in Fenway Park, the crowd of 36,489 witnessed a barrage of hits and a see-saw battle in the Red Sox's 6-4 win over the Rangers.
"I felt like our guys had a challenge today with one of the best pitchers in baseball, and kept battling back. They go ahead, 2-0, we jump back, 3-2, 4-4. We had a lot of players fill in today," Rangers manager Buck Showalter said. "Sometimes the game's not fair. [Curt] Schilling got the benefit of a lot of balls that were borderline out of the zone, so that's part of the challenge that you face here."
Texas southpaw John Rheinecker made his second start at Fenway this season against the big righty, Schilling.
In his last outing in Boston on June 10, Rheinecker received a no-decision against rookie Jon Lester, who made his Major League debut on that day. On Thursday, Rheinecker couldn't have gone against anyone more seasoned than the 19-year veteran with two World Series rings.
"You can kind of use the same refrain for his outings here lately," Showalter said. "There have been a lot of hard-hit balls. It's happened a lot. He had a tough lineup, all right-handed, to pitch to here. I thought we pitched pretty well out of the bullpen after the fact."
Rheinecker, who thought the Red Sox's at-bats were less successful, only lasted 3 2/3 innings, allowing four runs and eight hits in the loss, while Schilling allowed four runs over seven innings.
"The outer half of the strike zone wasn't there, that's for sure. ... [It] seemed like if I didn't throw it in the middle to away, it wasn't getting called," Rheinecker said. "Otherwise, I thought they were off-balance, for sure. They didn't really smoke any balls today."
The Red Sox struck early with two runs in the first inning. Mark Loretta and Kevin Youkilis singled before Manny Ramirez drove in a run with an RBI double. Jason Varitek brought in Youkilis with a groundout to first base.
The Rangers responded to the challenge only one inning later with three runs of their own. After singles by Hank Blalock and Kevin Mench, Brad Wilkerson hit an RBI double to left field that managed to stay fair by a few inches. Rod Barajas followed with a bloop single to right field that scored Mench and Wilkerson.
"We had that one inning where we scored a few runs and we pushed a few across," Rangers shortstop Michael Young said. "Against a guy like Schilling, you have to make sure you keep grinding and keep pounding away as the game goes on because he's one of those guys. He's going to pick up steam and get tougher in those tough situations later on in the game."
"As an offense, we normally take a lot of pride in making sure we have our best at-bats in those situations. He made his pitches when he had to. He's going to get those tough at-bats when you have to bear down and have your best at-bats."
After Mark DeRosa saved a run by nailing Loretta, pulling a "Jeremy Giambi" and not sliding, at the plate in the third inning, the right fielder allowed two runs to score on a fly ball hit by Wily Mo Pena that was misjudged and bounced off his glove to the ground.
Rheinecker left the game in the fourth inning in favor of sidearm reliever Wes Littleton, who worked out of a couple of tough situations in 1 1/3 innings, but did not allow a run.
"[I] definitely [threw] sinker [and] curveball pretty much all day -- mixing in a few changeups. [I] didn't really go in a lot," Rheinecker said.
The Rangers pulled even in the sixth inning, when Barajas hit a double that sent Mench motoring around third base and around the tag of Varitek at home.
Bryan Corey came on to pitch for Texas in the sixth and gave the lead right back. In a rare display of Red Sox small ball, Alex Gonzalez advanced to second on an Alex Cora sacrifice bunt and then was brought home just ahead of the Gary Matthews Jr. throw on a Loretta single.
The Red Sox added an insurance run in the seventh, when Matthews unnecessarily dove for a ball hit by Varitek that bounced nowhere near his glove and rolled past him to allow Ramirez to score from first.
In a game where the hitting was contagious and the bases were rarely vacant, the two teams could have easily surpassed their combined 10 runs and 23 hits, stranding a combined 16 runners on base.
One of the Rangers' better opportunities was taken, or rather snared, away from them in the third inning, when DeRosa came up with two men on and, according to Showalter, "Hit a ball right on the button that almost took Schilling's head off," but, instead it found its way into the hurler's glove.
Schilling faced another jam in the fifth inning with two men on and two out, but the ace was able to escape by striking out Blalock on three straight pitches.
"He threw really well," Blalock said. "He showed what a good pitcher he is. After we scored some runs on him, he settled down to put up some goose eggs. [He] pounded the strike zone and got us to chase when we shouldn't have."
For Rheinecker, this start may have been his last for awhile. Adam Eaton made his fourth, and likely his last, rehab start for Triple-A Oklahoma on Thursday, getting the win while allowing one run and three hits over four innings. Eaton may be called up to start for Texas on Tuesday.
"If they [Triple-A pitching coach Andy Hawkins and coach Mike Boulanger] feel like he's ready to make that step, we'll talk about it on the plane about how we can make room for him. I wouldn't say anybody's ... we haven't gotten that far with the decision," Showalter said.
The likely options are that Rheinecker would either work out of the bullpen or be sent down to Triple-A. On his future role with the team, Rheinecker said, "That's out of my hands."

Source: http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/