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About Last Night: Sometimes Rangers Are The Windshield, Sometimes They Are The Bug

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Sometimes, you simply play – or pitch – a bad game. Sometimes even it’s a very bad game.

After hours of introspection and a few minutes of research that seems to be the best answer to what happened to the Rangers in a 9-4 swamping they suffered at the hand of the Los Angeles Angels Monday night. The loss, of course, dropped the Rangers a game off the AL West lead. Kevin Millwood was awful, which is news in and of itself, because he hasn’t come remotely close to having a bad game this season.

For the first time this year, Millwood did not come out for the sixth inning and he probably shouldn’t have been forced to get through five, but that’s one small contribution he made to keeping the bullpen a little bit more fresh for Tuesday.  Millwood, who pitched into the seventh five days earlier against the Angels, left pitches in the hitting zone and the Angels pounced. Millwood allowed nine runs, tied for the most he’s allowed as a Ranger, in his five innings of work. His ERA rose more than a half a run from 2.80 to 3.34, pushing him down from fifth in the league to 10th.

“I didn’t hit my spots,” Millwood said.  “When I tried to go away, it would drift over the middle of the plate. And when I didn’t hit my spots, they hit those mistakes. I think pitching up is part of my game, one of my strengths. Bu thigh-high isn’t. Thigh-high is a bad place to throw the ball and that’s where I was missing tonight.”

That was plainly evident in the second inning and got progressively worse. After Juan Rivera reached on an infield single, Millwood walked Kendry Morales before getting the second out. After running the count to 3-and-2 on No. 8 hitter Jeff Mathis, Millwood tried to go low and away with a fastball, but he missed thigh-high and over the plate. Mathis drove it for a three-run homer.

In both the third and fifth innings, Millwood started the inning with a walk to leadoff hitter Chone Figgins. The Angels followed with multiple hits in each inning to build a 9-2 lead.

”We’ve seen him a few times. And when you see somebody that many times, you tend to have a plan and you try to stick with it,” Mathis said. ”The guys were having good at-bats tonight, finding some holes and producing runs. The man’s good and he’s got good stuff, but sometimes that’s going to happen.”

Last night, I suggested that maybe Millwood is not the kind of pitcher who would succeed facing the same team twice in consecutive starts. He doesn’t have an overpowering fastball. He’s not terribly deceptive. He relies on hitting spots and pitching to contact. The supposition was that with such a pitcher, the advantage would swing to the opponent in the second start because they’d still have his timing and delivery fresh in their heads.

Research, however, suggests that Millwood normally is pretty good in those situations. Though he didn’t face the same opponent twice in a week last year, he had done it 10 times in the previous five years with solid results, a 6-3 record and 4.53 ERA.

“Kevin can face anybody in a short period of time,” manager Ron Washington said. “I’ll take him against the same team five days later any day. But he’s only human. They just got him tonight.”