Texas and Oakland kicked off my week of baseball. The Rangers came into tonight's game 5 up on the Angels and are anxious to clinch what would be their 2nd consecutive AL West Division crown. Oakland is a distant third in the division, 19 games out of first, but split their last series with the Tigers.
Rich Harden took the hill for the A's and got the first two Rangers out to begin the game, but then ran into 1st inning trouble. Josh Hamilton and Michael Young hit back-to-back singles right before Adrian Beltre brings everyone home with his 28th homer of the year and the Rangers are out of the gate with a 3-0 lead. Harden struggled with location, particularly with the fastball which Hamilton, Young and Beltre all hit. One thing about Texas I've noticed, these guys do not miss mistake pitches very often.
Harden would only go 3 innings, his shortest outing of the year, giving up 6 earned runs on 7 hits. Derek Holland wins the game for the Rangers, going 7 innings, yielding only 2 hits and an earned run. The A's did get effective relief from Graham Godfrey, a couple homers from Michael Taylor (his first career MLB home run) and one in the 9th from Coco Crisp (who also made a great diving stop of an Elvis Andrus liner in the 2nd), however the A's could muster little else.
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