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Well-Charged Battery Allows Texas Rangers To Beat The Heat And The Padres In Homestand Opener

# Box score # In-game blog

ARLINGTON - One hundred degrees and one-hundred-plus pitches. No problem for Kevin Millwood. Hey, when the Rangers were battling 12 innings on Thursday in Arizona, he was comfy at home in Irving with remote in hand.

“I’m probably a little more animated than you guys see me,” he calmly said of his TV watching. “I was rooting, screaming a little bit.”

But Jarrod Saltalamacchia caught all 12, landed on the team plane at 4:40 a.m. and was back behind the plate on Friday night.

“I wanted to be in the lineup,” he said. “I came to the field ready to play.”

Millwood battled through what he called his worst stuff of the season. Saltalamacchia continued his hot hitting of the last two weeks, and the Rangers have now won three straight with the 12-2 rout of San Diego at Rangers Ballpark.

Millwood is 8-5 following his 12^th quality start, has the No. 4 ERA in the American League at 2.64 and is scheduled to make three more appearances before the All-Star break. “He’s been a lot better than his record shows,” Saltalamacchia said. “There are some games where we should have gotten some runs for him and couldn’t produce. But he’s a horse.”

The six-inning effort was Millwood’s shortest of the month, during which he allowed only five earned runs in 34.2 innings. He moves atop the league in innings pitched despite a few early struggles against a Padres lineup that is last in the majors in runs and tied for last in batting average.

“He’s the leader of the pack,” manager Ron Washington said. “He’s everything that we need. You can’t ask anymore of him. He’s been working hard, and the results are showing.”

And the Rangers’ attack needed only three innings to equal the nine runs of Thursday night’s 12-inning game in Phoenix. San Diego starter Walter Silva was bounced around for seven hits and four walks in 2.1 innings. Every Ranger reached base. Elvis Andrus equaled his major-league high with four hits; his third-inning triple broke a 22-game streak without an extra-base hit.

Saltalamacchia went 2-for-3 plus a walk – a single, double and two RBIs – to extend his hitting streak to seven games. In his last 11 games, he has improved his batting average from .241 to .258.

“I haven’t seen these guys before, so I wanted to see some pitches, work the count a little bit and did that my first at-bat,” Saltalamacchia said. “All night long, I just felt real comfortable at the plate.”

As did most of his teammates. The dozen runs were the most since the 14-1 win over Oakland on May 30 that gave the Rangers a 5.5-game lead in the division.

“I hope the June slump is over,” Saltalamacchia said, “and we’re moving on.”

Asked whether the hitting drought is over, Washington said, “Ask me in another four or five days.”

That would be at or near the end of the Angels’ visit next week.