Rich Harden and the bullpen get within two outs of a no-hitter
Rich Harden wasted no time silencing any doubts on the health of his shoulder Monday night by throwing a no-hitter into the seventh inning to lead the Texas Rangers to a 4-0 win over the Minnesota Twins.
Harden and the bullpen had a no-hitter going in to the ninth inning before last year’s AL MVP, Joe Mauer, hit a single off Neftali Feliz to end the Ranger’s bid for the sixth no-hitter in the league this season.
Earlier in the day Harden was activated off the disabled list. Even though he had some control issues which resulted in five walks, manager Ron Washington still felt comfortable letting him throw 111 pitches before pulling him from the game two outs into the seventh inning.
“I wasn’t going to sit around and let him throw 120 pitches out there,” Washington said. “The seventh inning was going to be his last one anyway.”
Harden had the comfort of working with an early lead courtesy of triple in the first inning that scored Josh Hamilton and Vladimir Guerrero. Michael Young added to the lead with an RBI in the fifth inning. Josh Hamilton ended the scoring on the day with a sacrifice fly to centre-field that allowed Elvis Andrus to score.
“It was good to get Rich an early cushion there just to kind of put him in a little bit of a comfort zone with it being his first start in a couple of weeks,” Murphy said.
Josh Hamilton did not do much to add to his MVP candidacy. He went one for three on the day with one RBI and scored one run while striking out once.
Nick Blackburn pitched seven solid innings for the Twins giving up eight hits and three earned runs before turning the game over to Matt Guerrier who gave up the final run off two hits in the eighth inning. The loss decreased their lead over the Chicago White Sox in the AL Central to four and a half games.
The win improved the Rangers to 70-54 on the season. They increased their lead over the idle Oakland Athletics to eight and a half games and to nine games over the Los Angeles Angles who lost to the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3.
Colby Lewis will attempt to improve his record to .500 when he takes the mound for the Rangers in the second game of the four game series Tuesday night against Carl Pavano for the Twins.
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