Young finding his stride

Rangers win 2nd straight in Oakland …

Chris Young with another solid start, despite allowing base runners …

"That's why you feel good about him in the future," manager Buck Showalter said. "He doesn't melt down out there."

The result was this: Young (3-2) has allowed two runs in his last 15 1/3 innings. When things turned sour, Young, a Highland Park graduate, said he pitched better. In the first inning, he made 31 pitches but wiggled out of a bases-loaded jam.

Chris Young may be figuring things out. His third solid start in a row, and he looks to have a certain command of his surroundings when he gets in a jam. Let’s look at the Quality Starts for each of the Rangers starters. Quality Starts are defined as 6 innings or more, and 3 earned runs or fewer…

Young: 6 starts, 2 quality starts (4/28, 5/3)
Rogers: 6 starts, 5 quality starts (4/6, 4/11, 4/21, 4/27, 5/2)
Drese: 6 starts, 2 quality starts (4/5, 4/15)
Park: 5 starts, 3 quality starts (4/13, 4/23, 4/29)
Astacio: 5 starts, 3 quality starts (4/9, 4/14, 4/19)

Team: 28 starts, 15 quality starts

The first thing that jumps out at you is how money Kenny Rogers continues to be. Then, the fact that Drese’s last 3 starts have all been rough, as have Astacio’s last few. But don’t look now, Park and Young have been pretty strong their last few turns. Park gets the ball again this afternoon.

And as a staff, over 50% quality starts? Love it.

Links:

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London Times on Liverpool’s win …

Whatever they go on to achieve under José Mourinho, Chelsea and their billionaire owner learnt last night that there are some things money cannot buy. Four famous Scousers once sang that it can’t buy you love, but add to that the type of passion that was required to propel Liverpool into their first European Cup final since 1985. Mourinho had shaken his head when asked whether the Kop could be the opposition’s twelfth man, but instead they proved to be Liverpool’s ninth, tenth and eleventh, inspiring players such as Djimi Traoré and Igor Biscan to play like the immortals that they might now become.

The legitimacy of Luis García’s fourth-minute goal was fiercely questioned by Chelsea’s players, but above all it was a sense of local pride, embodied on the pitch by Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard, that tipped the scales in Liverpool’s favour. They might not be good enough to triumph in the final on May 25, when their opponents will almost certainly be AC Milan, but their mere presence in Istanbul will be enough to restore much of the pride that the club have lost in the years since their ill-fated previous European Cup final.

In reality, win or lose, Istanbul will be the end of the road for some of these Liverpool players, men such as Jerzy Dudek and Milan Baros, whose efforts for much of this season have convinced Rafael Benítez that they need to be replaced. It might not even signify the start of something, given that the 33-point gap that separates them from Chelsea in the Barclays Premiership will be difficult to bridge, but even if it proves to be nothing more than a glorious one-off, it will be savoured by the supporters.

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