Rangers Can Only Blame Themselves

Playing defense has never been easy in this ballpark. Still, Texas Rangers Manager Johnny Oates was not about to blame the conditions for his team’s mistakes on Saturday.

“I don’t see what the wind or sun had to do with not picking up ground balls or getting runners picked off and letting them off the hook,” Oates said after five Ranger errors led to four unearned runs, including the game-winner in the 10th inning of the Giants’ 6-5 victory at 3 Com Park.

The Giants broke a three-game losing streak when third baseman Luis Alicea let Brian Johnson’s grounder roll under his glove for a two-base error with one out in the 10th.

That led to Darryl Hamilton’s RBI single off Danny Patterson (1-3) that scored pinch-runner Shawn Estes.

Center fielder Tom Goodwin charged Hamilton’s hit and made a diving attempt, but the ball short-hopped past him. Texas had won four in a row.

“We’ll take it any way we can,” Giant Manager Dusty Baker said. “We needed to end this losing streak and also be in a position where we can win a series again. It’s been a while since we’ve won a series.”

The Giant bullpen, capped by two scoreless innings from Robb Nen (5-1), pitched eight scoreless innings after the Rangers took a 5-2 lead. None of it would have mattered had the Rangers played better defense.

Trailing, 5-3, in the seventh, the Giants used first baseman Will Clark’s errant throw during a rundown with Hamilton to keep an inning alive, eventually tying it on two two-out RBI singles from Stan Javier and Bill Mueller.

Texas center fielder Roberto Kelly had gone 119 games without making an error, then made two in one inning by not cleanly fielding consecutive singles.