Texas Rangers ace Kevin Millwood was making his fourth consecutive opening day start since joining the Texas Rangers.
The results have never been good (0-3).
They were Monday.
Millwood pitched seven strong innings allowing just one run and five hits, all singles, to pick up the easy 9-1 win.
Yet, the former Indian always seems to do one thing well: beat the Indians, Paul Hoynes wrote. Millwood is now 4-1 in six career starts against the Tribe.
Conversely, Indians starter Cliff Lee has never been very good while pitching in Texas (3-3, 9.19 ERA in six career starts), but that didn’t seem to be the reason for his troubles Monday.
Lee retired the first four batters of the game before being hit in the left forearm on a Hank Blalock single up the middle.
The Rangers took advantage of the situation, posting four runs in the in the inning.
The Indians brass said the forearm shot was not a factor, Sheldon Ocker wrote.
Anthony Castrovince had this to say in his blog:
Today’s loss boiled down to a poorly pitched second inning and one particularly bad pitch to Blalock in the fifth.
On the other hand, Millwood was simply brilliant. Jim Reeves of the Star-Telegram credited Millwood’s off season conditioning to the good start.
Reeves points out Rangers club president Nolan Ryan basically informed his pitchers during the off season to get in shape or find a new team.
Although the Rangers swung the bats well, the hitters gave all the credit to Millwood.
The rest…
The Indians were awestruck to have former President George W. Bush in their locker room Monday. Bush, a former owner of the Rangers, threw out the first pitch.
– Omar Vizquel expects to play in Thursday’s game.
“I can’t hit Cliff Lee and Fausto Carmona,” Vizquel joked with Paul Hoynes.
– Anthony Castrovince has already moved onto Wednesday. Fausto Carmona must keep his composure and emotions intact, he writes.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Three things:
1) Are there no baseball fans in NE Ohio who care about making a Tribe blog comment? Weird.
2) Texas just has Cleveland’s number. No matter how bad their record, the Rangers always seem to bash the Tribe. How I wish we had their lineup. And oh, how I wish Texas had played Andruw Jones…a sure 4 outs per game.
3) The Tribe will go nowhere if their starting pitching doesn’t hold opponents to 3 runs in 6 or 7 innnings. This lifeless offense will be fortunate to manufacture 4 runs per game. It’s been proven for month-long stretches over the past two years, yet no major upgrades. Cleveland has wasted two seasons worth of the best pitching it will EVER possess, all because the front office failed to upgrade the offense.
There are Cleveland fans. Many of them may still be vomiting after that depressing debut.
Texas is usually a streaky team, though if they can get that kind of performance regularly out of Millwood and Padilla pitches up to his potential, they could contend in the West.
Everybody knew the key to the Indians season was the starting rotation. Remember this is one game, and really, the last few runs the Rangers scored were stat boosters. The Indians had more than given up by that point.