On Wednesday, when the game-time temperature was a steamy 98 degrees, Millwood threw 113 pitches in 5.2 innings, eventually losing a 4-1 lead in the sixth after laboring through a 34-pitch fifth inning. He appeared to be worn down early in the sixth, but it wasn’t until the game was tied that he was pulled.

On the way to averaging 106.4 pitches per outing, Millwood has thrown at least 110 pitches in 16 of his starts. He’d never before thrown at least 110 pitches in more than 13 games in a season and that was six years ago. In his first three seasons with the Rangers, Millwood reached 110 pitches a total of just 15 times.

Manager Ron Washington, who has gotten more out of his starters this season by not having a quick trigger-finger, said Millwood was still sharp heading to the sixth and he had no intention of pulling him before the inning despite the presence of an eight-man bullpen. Millwood said he felt fine, but had a hard time making quality pitches in the inning. But after he allowed consecutive doubles to start the inning, on the heels of that long fifth, it certainly appeared the game and the Twins had caught up to him, yet he faced four more batters and allowed a 4-1 lead to become a tie game. RHP Darren O’Day allowed the runner he inherited to score to give Minnesota the lead.

Bottom line: The Rangers have done a great job at getting their pitchers to think about getting deeper into games and the pitchers have done all the heavy lifting. But it is August; it is well over 90 degrees most nights and you want your pitchers as fresh as possible for the September stretch drive. If there was ever a time to err on the side of caution, this is the time.

• Though 1B Hank Blalock took a walk for the second consecutive game, his on-base percentage continues to fall. It is now .274 for the season, last in the AL and one point ahead of Cincinnati’s Willy Taveras (.273), who has the worst OBP among the 160 batting-title qualifiers in baseball.

Ranger first baseman – primarily Chris Davis and Blalock – have a composite .257 OBP, which is the worst in the majors at the position – by 43 points. It is the second worst OBP by any one position by any one team in the majors; Kansas City’s shortstops are at .231. Since OBP splits by position were first kept in 1974, no team has had a lower first base OBP than the 1983 Oakland A’s (.268).

• Do the Rangers option OF Julio Borbon if Nelson Cruz, 0-for-10 in three games at Oklahoma City on a rehab assignment, is activated tonight? My bet is it’s one of the eight relievers, instead. Borbon has hit safely in all six of his starts since coming back 10 days ago and he’s been on base multiple times in each of his last five starts. Maybe the Rangers continue sitting him against lefties for the time being and maybe they use him as a DH some against right-handed pitching with an outfield rotation of Marlon Byrd, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and David Murphy who are all considered better fielders than Borbon at this point. But Borbon has made himself into a weapon. Until opponents figure him out and make an adjustment, the Rangers have to take advantage of his assets.

• Speaking of Borbon, he may be a “small-ball” whiz, but manager Ron Washington said he had to take the rookie out for some bunting practice after his first attempt at a sacrifice bunt. Borbon was still turning like he was bunting for a hit.

“We just had to explain what a sacrifice bunt really was,” Washington said. “He had to square around and give himself up.”

• Good quote from Ron Washington on how he plans to use Ivan Rodriguez behind the plate: “I’m not going to chose which pithcers he plays against; I’m going to choose which of our pitchers he catches.”

In other words, don’t expect Rodriguez to automatically sit against right-handed pitching.

• A pattern may be emerging on Feliz’s use. He may not be a starter, but it appears once he’s put in close to a starter’s workload for a week, he’s going to get a little extra rest. Feliz pitched on August 3, 5 and 7 after his callup and amassed 72 pitches in those five days. He didn’t pitch again until the 13th, which started another run of three outings in five days. He threw 85 pitches in those three outings. So, even though manager Ron Washington said Feliz was available, the Rangers did not use him. Not a criticism, just noting that, at least at first glance, it appears maybe that’s the way the Rangers, will protect him for the remainder of the season. Wonder if there was some concern when his fastball velocity was down just a tad in his last outing.

• A few last words on the Matthew Purke situation, which is still gnawing at me. Something just doesn’t add up. The Rangers knew what the Purkes’ demand was going into the draft and as late as last weekend, GM Jon Daniels said that whatever idea the Rangers got about Purkes bonus demands before the draft had not shifted upwards at any time during the negotiations. The Rangers knew what he wanted and drafted him anyway. To not get him signed, especially for a team that has put so much emphasis lately on draft success, is a real blow.

Regardless of whether Randy Galloway’s column about MLB controlling the Rangers has any truth or not, the failure to sign Purke only heightens perceptions that the club’s financial strife is more serious than anybody thought even a week ago. That’s when Cleveland president Paul Dolan was saying his team was having financial problems, but labeled the Rangers “an extreme” situation.

Finally, please, no more shots at Purke. In this world, if an 18-year-old kid is willing to forego millions of dollars to attend college – even if its just for two years and to potentially better position himself down the road – he’s to be congratulated. Providing he doesn’t get hurt, Purke will come out of TCU better prepared for life in general than if he barnstormed around the minor leagues. Hey, Tommy Hunter went to a big-time college, was the 54th pick overall and was entrenching himself in a rotation in two years.

I typed all that before the Rangers allowed five runs in the ninth inning. Now this questions confronts us: The Rangers got the win tonight, but how much of the club’s confidence might the Angels’ ninth-inning rally dampen.

Another troubling sign: His pace slowed to a crawl after he got in a jam. It was that interminable pace that often lulled his teammates into hypnotic trances and led to sloppy play behind him. Padilla ended up throwing 35 pitches in the inning.

Also, red just won the dot race. Red looks unbeatable. It’s 2-0.

The Rangers may not be anybody's April Fool this year.

Baseball conventional wisdom says: “You can’t win a playoff spot in April, but you can lose one.”

It applies only to 29 teams.

The adage changes for the Rangers. It goes something like this: “As goes April, so goes the season.”

At least it’s been that way since 1994 when the club moved into the summertime blast furnace known as Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. The rules all changed with the new stadium and the changing global climate (if you believe such silly folks as scientists).

Because the place is hitter friendly in the first place and because the winds tend to gather into a jet stream to right center during the summer and because the temperatures regularly rise above 90 after mid-June, getting off to a hot start in the spring and surviving through the summer is essential.

Just consider the stats. Since moving into the park, the Rangers have had five “hot” Aprils. And by “hot” we mean being more than one game over .500 at the end of the month. Three of those years (1996, 1998 and 1999) resulted in division championships. A fourth, in 2004, resulted in an 89-win season. In 1997, mid-summer catastrophic injuries to the starting rotation wrecked a season that started with a 14-10 month.

Tonight, with RHP Vicente Padilla on the mound, the Rangers have a chance to go two games over .500 in April for the first time since the final day of the month in 2004.

“I still think that over the course of the regular season, you are going to win as many as you should and lose as many as you should, regardless of how you finish any one month,” said third baseman Michael Young. “I’m not one to look at April and say it’s a huge, huge month. It’s important to get some momentum, but it’s not do or die.”

The last two years, though, that’s exactly what it has been.

The Rangers got off to a 10-15 start in Ron Washington’s first year. And a bad April led into a worse May and a terrible June before there was any kind of recovery.

Last year, the Rangers seemed to feel the pressure of trying to avoid a similar start and fell into a worse hole. They fought their way to a 5-4 record, then lost 12 of the next 14. The Rangers made 30 errors in the 28 games of the first month and allowed 22 unearned runs. It put manager Ron Washington on the brink of firing before the club started to turn things around.

“I wish I had an answer to why we didn’t play well, but we didn’t,” Washington said.

The Rangers spent the summer months clawing their way back up the standings and by the time they got to August, they were on the fringes of the wild card race. But that’s about the time of year the heat takes a toll on the pitching staff. After the mid-July All-Star break, the team compiled a 5.77 ERA. Even the best offense in the league couldn’t keep pace with that.

That’s why getting out in front in April is so important. While teams in more comfortable climates – see Oakland and Los Angeles – have the capability to track down front runners with steady pitching in the summer months, it’s necessary for the Rangers to set the tone and put pressure on those clubs.

To do it, the Rangers are trying to go back in time. On Monday, the Rangers took the first step by winning a season-opener for the first time since 2003. Tonight, they have a chance to go to 2-0 for the first time since 2000. It’s all in a goal of doing what they haven’t done since 1999: win the division.

“We understand that if we want to win the division, we’ve got to play good baseball all year and that includes April,” said 2B Ian Kinsler. “I think last year, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves in the clubhouse to not have a repeat of 2007. This year, no one mentioned it. We know what we have to do and we’ve been getting ready to do it.”

Kinsler and others all believe that familiarity will play a big part in a better start. And it may very well do that. While there are a handful of new players, most are in part-time roles. With the exception of rookie Elvis Andrus, the personnel in the starting lineup is the same as it was for much of last year. The pitching staff has added Kris Benson, but that’s the only new face on a 12-man staff.

But there are other factors, too.

•  Home time: The Rangers opened at home, play nine of their first 12 games in Arlington and are at home for 12 of 22 games during the month. It’s a direct contrast to Washington’s first two years. They didn’t open at home in either 2007 or 2008 and they played more games on the road than in Arlington in both months.

• Opponents: While team makeup obviously changes from year to year, the Rangers April opponents are coming off far worse seasons than the 2008 opponents. This year’s group, which includes only three games against a team that finished above .500 last year (Toronto), had a .473 winning percentage in 2008. Last year’s April opponents had a .514 winning percentage in 2007. It included four games at World Champion Boston and three games to open the season at Los Angeles, which won the AL West.

• AL West absence: Since 2001, the Rangers have spent most of April playing AL West opponents. That’s made rough starts doubly troublesome. The Rangers were 7.5 games out in the division race by the end of April last year. This year, they play only three games within the division this month, all against Oakland in Arlington to conclude the month.

April is crucial to the Rangers’ season and the last two years it’s been cruel. But the start and the schedule suggest that maybe, just maybe, a new spring could dawn in Arlington.

OF Josh Hamilton is shelling the fairly crowded berm area beyond the outfield fences. He dropped on the left side of the berm in the first inning for a two-run homer, then dropped on on the right side in second for a three-run blast. Hamilton is one homer behind teamate OF Nelson Cruz, who is tied for the Cactus League lead.

With two men on, RHP Brandon McCarthy ended an Angels’ third-inning rally with a strike out of Vladimir Guerrero on a sharp “slurve.” The 79 mph pitch broke away from Guerrero and had him well out in front of the pitch. And while the ball ended up out of the strike zone, he kept it low and away.

Going into tonight’s game, the Stars are tied for 23rd, having allowed 222. With 10 games remaining, they already have given up more goals than in any full season since the dreadful 1995-96 campaign during which Bob Gainey handed the bench to Ken Hitchcock.

Sergei Zubov’s season was limited to 10 games. He walks with a severe limp and will turn 39 in July. Philippe Boucher was gone after 16 games. Marty Turco is tied for 28th in goals against, 37th in save percentage.

Have the blue liners and Turco partially paid for an attack that has lacked Brenden Morrow for much of the season and Brad Richards recently? Is this to be expected with kids like Matt Niskanen, Marc Fistric and Niklas Grossman playing significant roles? Is this an anomaly for Turco following the ’08 playoff run during which he finally solved the mystery of Joe Louis but now has difficulty beating St. Louis?

Do you think their goals against can be turned around next season?

To bring you up to date: RHP Frank Francisco is the closer and nothing has changed about that. LHPs C.J Wilson and Eddie Guardado are expected to be the primary setup men, though both have dealt with some spring training pains that make things a little less certain. Wilson’s had a bruised hand and a split callus that have limited him to 1.1 innings since March 1; he’s supposed to return to the mound today, so that will be something of a focus for this afternoon’s game with Colorado. Guardado has dealt with some shoulder stiffness, but he’s dealt with shoulder issues for the last five years and unless his arm becomes physically unattached, he will be ready for the start of the season.

RHP Warner Madrigal has all but clinched a job, though with more than two weeks left until the season begins, you can never be absolutely certain. The rest is a melange of occasional impressive outings (RHP Willie Eyre), decent track records trying to bounce back from injury (RHPs Brendan Donnelly and Derrick Turnbow) and, well, others.

Up to date? Good.

Now on to why its so important the Rangers make the absolute best possible decisions regarding the makeup of the middle of the bullpen. The Bill James Gold Mine is 271 pages of esoteric statistical studies, strange essays and what not. But buried in all that pyrite is an occasional real nugget of gold. To me, the gem in the Rangers chapter of the book is a study James did of Rangers’ line scores.

James notes the Rangers jumped out to the most first inning leads in all of baseball. The Rangers led at the end of the first 52 times, trailed 41 and were tied on 69 occasions. That’s all great, but to me, where things get really interesting is as the games progress. The Rangers led more games than they trailed by a significant margin in each of the first six innings. They led those games by an average of 8.6 times more often than they trailed. But get to the seventh inning – the point where middle relief becomes absolutely essential – and things change dramatically. At the end of the seventh, the Rangers trailed 72 times (they had not trailed more than 66 times at the end of any of the first six innings). At the end of the eighth, they led 69 times and trailed 79 times. And of course, ultimately, at the end of games, they led 79 times and trailed 83.

It’s a pretty stark reminder that for all the fretting about the starting rotation, the Rangers were a losing team because the middle of the bullpen, overexposed and ultimately overused, couldn’t protect leads. Make no mistake, the rotation’s performance and the bullpen’s effectiveness go hand-in-hand. But the Rangers were in position to win games late last year and the bullpen couldn’t hold those leads. If the Rangers intend to improve upon last year’s win total, the bullpen must be deeper and more reliable.

Said DH and fashion maven Hank Blalock: “I never saw the two-tone helmets in person, but from what I saw on the internet, they would have made us look like a clown. Put that on your blog.”

As for lesser news: LHP C.J. Wilson has more range of motion in his sore left index finger, but the Rangers still don’t have a reading on yesterday’s X-ray. Wilson took a grounder off the finger and left the game after it swelled up. The club doesn’t think there is a major fracture in the finger, but team physician Dr. Keith Meister, who arrives in Surprise tomorrow, will give him a full exam to try and rule out any hairline breaks. … LHP Kason Gabbard is going to pitch in a game for the first time this spring in the “B” game that begins in only 20 minutes. Good seats are still available. He will follow RHP Brandon McCarthy. … In the “A” game at 1:05, my Key West cousins will get a treat: OF Ben Harrison, the pride of the Conch Republic, will get a start. The only starters in the lineup are 1B Chris Davis, C Jarrod Saltalamacchia and SS Elvis Andrus. … Most important thing about the game against the Royals is that both RHP Brendon Donnelly and RHP Josh Rupe, candidates in that crowded bullpen battle, will pitch.

1. A hard-working but seemingly effortless Kevin Millwood. Any hope the Rangers have of surprising in the AL West this year hinges on improvement from the starting rotation. Last year, Millwood was simply awful. He had a soft spring, was hurt early, and never really recovered. The enduring image of him from the season is of him laboring through a sweat-soaked uni in the fourth or fifth inning of (insert game here).

Nolan Ryan essentially threatened Millwood last September to lose 20 pounds and go through a full spring, which meant a full slate of “A” games. Not sure whether the threat could have been carried through, but so far, Millwood made both of his scheduled starts, and, according to those I’ve spoken to in Arizona, he’s been smooth and effortless off the mound. In two outings, he’s had five scoreless innings, including three on Wednesday. I’ll have to wait until early next week to see Millwood in a game, but make no mistake, no player’s spring performance is more important than his.

2. Smooth fielding. Over the two years that Ron Washington has led the team, the club has committed 256 errors, the most in baseball (no team in the AL is within 30). That’s led to an MLB-worst 196 unearned runs. Simply unacceptable. The promotion of Elvis Andrus to shortstop and the move of Michael Young to third base was intended to help lock down the left side of the infield, but overall fielding improvement is absolutely necessary.

3. Elvis Andrus’ work ethic. I don’t need to see Andrus make a single sensational play this spring. His talent speaks for itself. Everybody who has ever seen him understands he’s got terrific athletic talent, but what will translate into making him a big league star is how smart he works.

I’ve been told Michael Young and Ian Kinsler can’t shake the kid in drills — not that there is anything wrong with that. In fact, it’s exactly what I’d like to see. Having Andrus follow those two around will only help accelerate his ability to adjust to the majors. Spoke with both Young and Kinsler this week and both of them offered the same kind of raves about Andrus that they did about Chris Davis last year. That’s a good thing.

4. Strikes. This could just as easily be No. 1 or 2 on the list. It’s that important. The Rangers have allowed 51 runs in their first seven spring games. While this trend could put a real dent into my happy hours and my ability to make the Early Bird dinner special in Surprise, it is otherwise meaningless. First, everybody allows runs in the Arizona air. Second, if it means the Rangers are learning to throw strikes, it’s time well spent. The Rangers threw 24,986 pitches in 2008, most in the majors by 200 and most in the AL by 600. It leads to tired arms, disinterested fielders, big innings and big losses.

In a way, the Rangers and yours truly both have the same goal this spring: to make the InsideCorner a very popular place. If they spend the first two or three weeks of camp getting re-acquainted with that spot (and it’s buddy the OutsideCorner), that is a huge step forward.

5. An organized, efficient Ron Washington. There is no denying manager Ron Washington’s enthusiasm or his confidence, but it hasn’t translated into a solid start in either of his two seasons in Texas. Aside from some pitchers having soft springs the past two years, I can’t say there has been anything that’s stood out as “inefficient” about camp, but it’s quite clear the Rangers have to get something more out of camp this season. A third consecutive disastrous start is likely to mean you’ll be reading about a managerial change here at The Corner.

The addition of pitching coach Mike Maddux and bench coach Jackie Moore were designed to help Washington get more from his pitching staff and to be better prepared at game time. If there is a chemistry issue to address in spring, it’s not between players, but between manager and key coaches. They’ve got to get to know one another, get comfortable and trust one another. Considering that the only coach on Washington’s staff who was truly the manager’s choice is first base coach/outfield instructor Gary Pettis, getting this staff to blend together is not an issue to be taken lightly.

OK, just a couple of more quick hits:

Prospect I’m most curious to see: Left-hander Derek Holland. Had I ranked my top Rangers prospects this winter, Holland would have been first and Neftali Feliz second (Baseball America has the duo in inverse order). Holland is a touch older and is that rarest of things, a power lefty. He was apparently dealing on Wednesday against San Diego. He won’t make this team out of spring training, but might put himself in line to be the first callup. And if you’ve followed Rangers pitching exploits of the past, you know the first callup often comes before Tax Day.

Prospect I’m least curious to see: 1B Justin Smoak. After he crushed a ball last night, somebody raved to me that he’s the long-term replacement for Mark Teixeira. He might be, but let’s remember that Smoak has 56 professional at-bats to this point and that the guy currently playing first base for the Rangers (Chris Davis) is only nine months older than Smoak. I’m not disrespecting the kid’s talent at all, but this year should just be about playing and getting better and without the burden of expectations. When he’s ready for the majors, the Rangers will address whatever they need to address. For now, I’m eager for him to get on the back fields and start sinking into a bit of comfortable anonymity.