Game Report: Rangers 9, Royals 3

A quartet of Rangers prospects combined to hit for the cycle in the seventh inning as the Rangers ran away from the Royals at Surprise Stadium to claim the coveted best-of-seven Surprise City Championship four games to three. In the seventh, 3B Johnny Whittleman homered, OF Craig Gentry followed with a double. Later in the inning, OF-DH Chad Tracy singled and 1B Justin Smoak doubled. As winners of the Surprise City Championship, Rangers players will be entitled to free early bird dinner specials all next spring. Or not.

The good: After going 2-for-10 over the last week, C Jarrod Saltalamacchia broke out of a mini-slump with a two-run double in the second inning. A good sign: It came off LHP Horacio Ramirez. Saltalamacchia is a career .199 hitter against lefties and hit just .158 against them in 2008.

The bad: RHP Josh Rupe had a brief setback in his turnaround. He walked the Nos. 9-1 hitters in the fifth inning as Kansas City briefly cut the lead to 3-2. Rupe had not issued a walk in his last four outings. He did however get a double play grounder to get out of the inning with minimal damage. He also worked a second scoreless inning.

The record: The Rangers finished the Arizona portion of the spring at 20-13-1. It’s only the third time in club history they’ve won 20 games. One of them was the longest spring training in history (1995 with replacement spring training and then an abbreviated regular spring). They went 26-12-1 in 1995 and 21-10 in 1998. They finished with winning records during the regular seasons that followed those springs (74-70 in 1995, 88-74 in 1998).

On deck: The Rangers fled the desert behind Thursday night bound for Texas. They will face Kansas City twice more over the next two days in Frisco and Arlington to complete the exhibition schedule. RHP Vicente Padilla faces off against Royals RHP Zack Greinke at 7:05 p.m. at the Dr Pepper (Yay! Dr Pepper) Ballpark Friday (KRLD-105.3 FM “The Fan”). With the roster set, the Rangers’ only goal for the last two days is to simply avoid any injuries.