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Red-hot bullpen carries Rangers to win
Texas relief pitchers extend scoreless streak to 24 innings
By T.R. Sullivan / MLB.com

SEATTLE -- The Mariners were able to knock Rangers starter Kason Gabbard out of the game in the fourth inning on Thursday night at Safeco Field.

That didn't prevent the Texas pitching staff from throwing a second straight shutout. The scorching-hot bullpen saw to that.

Relievers Franklyn German, Jamey Wright, Eddie Guardado and Frankie Francisco combined for 5 1/3 innings of scoreless relief that allowed the Rangers to finish off a 5-0 victory over the Mariners. Combine that with a 2-0 victory on Wednesday, and the Rangers have thrown back-to-back shutouts for the first time since Sept. 18-19, 2007, in Anaheim.

Texas pitchers have not allowed a run in their last 22 innings and just one in their last 32.

"It's all about pitching, and these guys are doing a great job," Rangers catcher Gerald Laird said.

The Rangers finished their road trip with a three-game winning streak and a 5-2 record during their week-long visit to Oakland and Seattle. Overall, they've won nine of their last 13 games heading into a nine-game homestand that starts Friday night against the Athletics at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Rangers pitchers have a 3.49 ERA over the last 13 games, lowering the staff ERA from 5.54 to 4.80 on the season.

"The bullpen was outstanding tonight," Rangers manager Ron Washington said. "It was tough because we had to piece five innings together, but they did a great job."

German picked up the victory after Gabbard had to come out of the game with bruised legs, the result of his fourth-inning altercation with Mariners first baseman Richie Sexson.

"Gabbard was going pretty good," Washington said. "He was pounding the strike zone and getting ground balls. Then he got caught underneath that pile."

Gabbard allowed two hits and four walks in 3 2/3 innings. The four relievers that followed allowed just two hits, no walks and struck out five. Rangers relievers now have gone 24 innings of their own without allowing a run and have a 3.05 ERA in the last 13 games.

Prior to that, the bullpen had a staggering 6.83 ERA, mainly because Rangers relievers allowed 39 runs in 29 1/3 innings during the seven-game losing streak in Boston and Detroit.

"We ran through a little stretch where we quit throwing strikes and getting ahead of guys," Wright said. "That's what we've been concentrating on as a group -- throwing strikes and challenging hitters. It's tough to play defense when you're walking people, but right now guys are throwing the ball well."

T.R. Sullivan is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Friday schedule:

Oakland at Texas, 6:30pm, KYZS-AM 1490 and KEES-AM 1430

Astros fall short of series, 'stand sweeps
Clutch hit never arrives; Backe's solid outing not enough
By Alyson Footer / MLB.com

HOUSTON -- The late-game magic that carried the Astros through much of their five-game winning streak was nowhere to be found Thursday during their series and homestand finale with the Nationals.

The Astros' powerful offense generated very little against Nationals lefty John Lannan as Houston dropped an 8-3 decision to fall short of sweeping the six-game homestand at Minute Maid Park.

The Astros produced a respectable number of baserunners, but their only payoffs arrived in the fourth inning when Hunter Pence's infield single scored Miguel Tejada from third and in the eighth, when they scratched out two runs behind a Carlos Lee base hit and fielder's choice grounder from Ty Wigginton.

Manager Cecil Cooper credited the Nationals' starting pitcher more than he blamed his hitters for falling short.

"I give the kid on the other side a lot of credit," Cooper said of Lannan. "He pitched well. He did something that I've been preaching here since Spring Training -- command your fastball, throw it down in the strike zone, and he kept it down in the strike zone all night. That's tough to handle when you throw strikes and keep it down."

Lannan had only three strikeouts, but he induced nine ground-ball outs during his six innings of work.

"That lets me know you can pitch at 88 [mph] and be successful by pitching down in the strike zone," Cooper said.

In his final inning, Lannan worked in and out of trouble while facing the middle of the Astros' order. Lance Berkman and Carlos Lee logged back-to-back singles, but Lannan caught a break when Pence hit a hard grounder directly to shortstop Cristian Guzman. Once the double play was complete, Ty Wigginton grounded to short.

"[Lannan] worked a Houdini to get out of that inning," Nationals manager Manny Acta said. "The double play was the hardest hit of the inning."

Said Lannan: "Once you get behind, those guys are going to hurt you. I tried to attack as much as possible. Lance is on right now, so I tried to attack, mix it in and out as much as possible. If I made a bad pitch, or didn't get ahead, I just moved on. That's part of the learning process."

Brandon Backe recorded his third loss in four decisions after yielding four runs over six frames. He yielded a solo homer to Willie Harris in the third, and the Nationals tacked on two more in the sixth behind a two-run single by Austin Kearns.

Cooper blamed himself for contributing to possible fatigue on Backe's part before the right-hander's sixth and final inning. Backe led off the fifth with a base hit and was on the run during Kazuo Matsui's at-bat, first on a 3-2 slider that Matsui fouled off, and again on the next pitch, which Matsui grounded to third.

Cooper sensed the extra running may have caused his pitcher to tire.

"It was a 2-1 game right there and I've got a 3-2 count on [Matsui], and [Backe's] running," Cooper said. "I had to stay away from the double-play ball. I think that took a little bit out of him, because the very next inning was when he gave up two runs. He started getting the ball up. I thought he made a couple mistakes up in the strike zone. I take the blame for that."

Backe admitted the baserunning may have affected his energy level, but he didn't use that as an excuse while lamenting his inability to pitch beyond the sixth inning. Backe completed seven innings only once this year.

"That's what bothers me the most," Backe said. "I'm coming out of games, in my mind, way too early. Finally, I got through the sixth inning, but I struggled to get through the sixth inning. Running the bases kind of hurt, but I've got to suck that up."

Logging a career high in strikeouts didn't help ease his frustration.

"I can't say that I did bad, but I made a few mistakes and they capitalized on it," he said. "I think they started to figure out that I was predominantly throwing sliders in a couple situations, especially in the sixth inning, and it seemed like they started reaching out over the plate and hit a couple balls up the middle."

A subdued crowd of 33,433 was quiet throughout the game, and the ballpark grew even more silent when a large portion of the audience left in the eighth inning as soon as Rob Mackowiak launched a three-run homer off Oscar Villarreal to put the Nats ahead by six.

Lance Berkman logged two hits, giving him nine hits in the three-game series with Washington. Berkman hit .667 [16-for-24] during the Astros' 5-1 homestand.

Alyson Footer is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Friday schedule:

Houston at Los Angeles, 9:40pm

Another Webb gem...Bucs sweep Giants again...Yankees flex muscles

UNDATED (AP) _ The Arizona Diamondbacks lead the National League with 23 wins this season, and Brandon Webb is responsible for over one-third of them.

Webb improved to 8-0 by tossing a six-hitter in the Diamondbacks' 8-3 win over Philadelphia. He's the first pitcher to win his first eight starts of a season since Jon Garland of the Chicago White Sox three years ago.

Chris Young hit a two-run homer and Chris Snyder added a two-run double as the D-Backs earned a split of the four-game series to move 3 1-2 games ahead of the second-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West.

Elsewhere in the National League, Matt Treanor slammed a three-run homer and Jorge Cantu hit a two-run blast in Florida's fourth straight win, 7-2 over Milwaukee. Luis Gonzalez went 3-for-3 with a walk for the Marlins, who have matched their best 34-game start at 20-14.

Pittsburgh's Adam LaRoche hit a go-ahead single in a three-run seventh inning that pushed the Pirates to a 5-4 victory and a three-game sweep of San Francisco. The Bucs have won 13 of their last 15 meetings with the Giants.

Atlanta completed a 6-0 homestand by beating San Diego 5-4 on a bases-loaded single by Matt Diaz in the bottom of the ninth. Pinch-hitter Greg Norton laced a game-tying two-run single for the Braves, who trailed 4-1 before earning a one-run victory for the first time in 10 tries this season.

Matt Holliday had four singles and Jorge De La Rosa scattered five hits over 5 2-3 innings as Colorado beat St. Louis 9-3. Garrett Atkins doubled, tripled and drove in a pair of runs to help the Rockies earn a split of the four-game series.

Over to the American League, where Josh Beckett struck out eight while holding Detroit to a run and six hits in seven innings of Boston's 5-1 win over the Tigers. Kevin Youkilis smacked his fourth homer of the series, a two-run drive that put the Red Sox ahead 5-1 in the fifth.

Jason Varitek delivered a two-run single as the Red Sox won for the sixth time in seven games.

The Tigers have dropped six of seven.

The New York Yankees salvaged the finale of a three-game series by hitting four homers in a 6-3 win over Cleveland. Jason Giambi, Robinson Cano, Johnny Damon and Wilson Betemit went deep to support Mike Mussina, who blew a 3-0 lead before winning his fourth consecutive start.

Jermaine Dye homered for the third straight game and Juan Uribe added a go-ahead two-run drive to lead the Chicago White Sox past the visiting Minnesota Twins 6-2. The win is just Chicago's second in nine games.

Daniel Cabrera fired a three-hitter and the Baltimore Orioles halted a five-game losing streak by beating Kansas City 4-1. Nick Markakis launched a three-run homer after scoring the game's first run on a wild pitch.

Tampa Bay blew a 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth before pulling out an 8-3 win at Toronto. Dioner Navarro hit a grand slam in the 13th inning after Carl Crawford drove in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly.

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Stars face first true test of adversity
John Tranchina

They say that the true measure of a champion is how they respond to adversity.

Well, the Dallas Stars have gotten their first real dose of it in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, down 1-0 in their best-of-seven Western Conference Final series with Detroit following a 4-1 defeat in Game 1 Thursday night at the Joe Louis Arena.

It’s the first time this spring that the Stars have trailed in a series, after they jumped out to 2-0 leads on both Anaheim and San Jose earlier in the post-season.

“It is different,” said captain Brenden Morrow, who scored the only Dallas goal. “We’ve been able to get the lead in the last two series and it was a big reason we won. Our goal is to come in here and steal one and that’s still there. It’s frustrating.”

Particularly frustrating is that the Stars on this night barely resembled the plucky group that fashioned impressive six-game series victories over the defending Cup champions and the Pacific Division champs in the previous two rounds. Perhaps there was still some mental or physical fatigue lingering from the epic four-overtime battle the Stars won last Sunday to clinch the Sharks series.

“That wasn’t even close to the games we’ve played in the playoffs,” Stars coach Dave Tippett said. “Whether there was some fatigue from that last game, whatever the reason, we didn’t play close to our capabilities. Give the Red Wings all the credit in the world, they did what they had to do to win, but we’ve got to be much better.

“It is disappointing, but when the whole group is like that, we had our top players, they looked down a quart tonight. And we just didn’t skate, just didn’t get to the level we needed to tonight. Whether we left our legs back in Dallas, time will tell, but we’ve got to re-group tomorrow and look to have a much better Game 2.”

“It was a bad game on our part and we know we can play better,” said defenseman Stephane Robidas, who had three shots on goal and was a + 1. “It’s not like we gave our best and they outplayed you and then you’re like, ‘Wow.’ Tonight they outplayed us, but we weren’t really there, we didn’t play our game.”

But the Stars aren’t about to get down about losing one game. They realize that there’s still a lot of hockey left to be played in this series, and now turn their focus to Game 2 here Saturday night (6 pm, VERSUS).

“It’s only 1-0, it takes four to win a series,” Robidas pointed out. “It’s a good wake-up call for us. We got to get ready for the next game, we got to forget about this one. Forget about it but learn from our mistakes at the same time. But that’s what the playoffs are all about, we need four wins, and it’s not over.”

“We’ll adjust, that’s why you have seven games,” added center Mike Ribeiro, who is second in the NHL in playoff assists with 11. “When you lose one, you adjust yourselves and you come back strong and I think that we know what we did well and what we didn’t do well and just regroup as a team, stay confident, better effort, better discipline and just be better on one-on-one battles.”

One of the keys to the victory for Detroit was special teams play, an area that Dallas has excelled at so far this post-season. The Wings scored their first three goals on the power play, the first on a 5-on-3, and enjoyed seven total advantages, four in the first period. At the other end, they killed off all four Stars man-advantages.

“We didn’t do a good enough job killing penalties,” Morrow said. “Special teams are usually one of our strengths, but tonight it just let us down a little bit.”

“You can’t take penalties like that and expect to stay in games,” said center Brad Richards, who led the Stars with five shots on goal. “They thrive on that power play. They’ve got a lot of skill out there. And every good player, every good team gets confidence when you have power plays and get the puck, handle the puck. And it just got the ball rolling. They’re a tough team to stop when you do that.”

The Stars actually surrendered more power play goals in this one game than they did in the entire San Jose series, killing 23-of-25 Shark advantages in six-plus contests. Either way, the key is to not give the Red Wings the power plays in the first place, and most of the infractions the Stars were guilty of was due to being a step behind all night.

“That’s a result of being behind in the game, just being behind,” Tippett said, although he did question the roughing call on rookie defenseman Mark Fistric that gave Detroit a two-man advantage at 4:19 of the first period and led directly to Brian Rafalski’s opening goal nine seconds later. “The penalty that put us down 5-on-3, that’s a pretty harsh penalty if you want to set a tone for a series, so that is what it is. But the other ones, the hooking, holding, they’re just from getting behind.”

“We need to have better discipline,” Robidas said. “If we don’t skate with them, we won’t compete with them. We can’t give those guys chances on the power play. They are too skilled and we just can’t do it. They scored three on the power play and that was basically the game.”

The Stars were a little miffed, also, that a goaltender interference penalty was not called on Tomas Holmstrom when he backed into Turco in the crease before Nicklas Lidstrom’s wrist shot deflected off his knee and over Turco’s shoulder to make it 3-0 at 6:40 of the second period. If that goal doesn’t count, Dallas is still just down two and might have a better opportunity to mount a comeback starting on the resulting power play.

“The third goal - we were told that if there was going to be a player in the blue paint, that would be no goal,” Tippett said. “Obviously, that didn’t happen. When they’re in the blue paint, our goaltender’s supposed to have the ability to do his job. The third goal, that wasn’t the case.”

“On the third one, I just thought my ability to come out in my blue (was impaired),” Turco said. “I’m not an aggressive angle guy, I’ll generally stay inside my crease. We were told that we have every ability to do anything inside the blue, and I just thought that was not necessarily interference, but I would think would be waved off, just not letting me do it, but the shot was coming at me, he tipped it right off me in a small little spot, and you have to give him credit for that.”

The Stars conceded that the close physical contact in the crease would likely continue throughout the series, so they’ll just have to adapt their game plan accordingly.

“That’s just playoff hockey,” Turco shrugged. “They did that in the regular season, (Holmstrom)’s done that his whole career, and they’re going to continue to do it. It’s something that I know, as a team and personally, I know we can overcome that, just foul him a little before he comes to the net.”

“That’s part of the game, you got to find a way to block those shots,” Robidas said. “It’s hard to get them out of the way, though, because once they get possession, you can’t really move them, you can’t really cross-check them like in the past. So we got to look at video and try and learn from it and go back at it Saturday.”

The next game will hopefully be the one where the Stars re-establish their game and get back to playing the way they have for the past month or so. Down for the first time this spring, their performance Saturday night in Game 2 will go a long way towards defining the tone of the rest of this series.

“We have to get skating. Before you can talk about any tactics or anything else, we’ve got to get our legs moving,” Tippett said when asked what the Stars would do differently. “We did a lot of standing in that game tonight. And that’s the bottom line. Before you can evaluate how you’re playing, you’ve got to get moving. You have to get engaged in the game. Whether it’s fatigue or whatever the reason tonight, we just weren’t at the level we needed to be.”

“They didn’t do anything that we didn’t expect out there,” Turco said. “It was probably a little bit closer, you know, with power play goals going in, than you realize. But it’s something we do need to re-group, talk about some things, and as a team, just make whatever adjustments are necessary. But it’s going to come down to each and every guy to doing their part. And 5-on-5, stay out of the box, work our talented power play a little better - we’ll be all right.”

Statistics:
2007-2008 Playoffs
SKATERS: GP G A +/- Pts
M. Ribeiro 13 3 11 3 14
B. Morrow 13 8 4 4 12
B. Richards 13 2 9 2 11
M. Modano 13 4 6 -3 10
J. Lehtinen 13 4 4 2 8
S. Robidas 13 1 7 4 8
L. Eriksson 13 3 3 0 6
M. Norstrom 13 2 3 3 5
S. Zubov 6 1 3 -2 4
J. Lundqvist 13 1 3 -1 4

GOALIES: W L OT Sv% GAA
M. Turco 8 5 0 .924 1.89
Full Team Stats >>

Saturday schedule:

Dallas @ Detroit
6:00 PM

DallasStars.com is the official Web site of the Dallas Stars

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Spurs 110 Hornets 99 (Hornets lead series 2-1)

SAN ANTONIO (AP) _ The San Antonio Spurs have bounced back from a pair of losses at New Orleans to beat the Hornets 110-99 in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals.

Tony Parker scored 31 points and had 11 assists to help the Spurs avoid falling behind 0-3 in the second. Manu Ginobili also finished with 31 points and combined with Parker for 17 points 17 while the Spurs were outscoring the Hornets 27-21 in the fourth quarter. The pair sparked an 11-0 spurt that put San Antonio ahead 101-88 midway through the final period.

Tim Duncan added 16 points and 13 rebounds to the win.

Chris Paul had another strong game for New Orleans, finishing with a game-high 35 points and nine assists. David West delivered 23 points and 12 rebounds, but Peja Stojakovic managed just eight points on 2-of-7 shooting.

The series stays in San Antonio for Game 4 Sunday.

UNDATED (AP) _ Right now, the Cleveland Cavaliers don't have a shot against the Boston Celtics.

The Celts have a two-games-to-none lead in the NBA's Eastern Conference finals after holding the Cavs under 36 percent shooting in an 89-73 win at Boston. LeBron James missed 18 of his 24 shots, leaving him just 8-for-42 in the first two games of the series. James was 0-for-5 from the field while the Cavaliers were shooting 11.8 percent in a disastrous second quarter.

The Celtics took control by outscoring Cleveland 27-12 in the second period to grab an eight-point halftime lead. Boston surged ahead after the Cavaliers took a 24-17 lead into the quarter.

Paul Pierce and Ray Allen led the Celtics' offense after the pair was held to just four points on 2-for-18 shooting in Tuesday's 76-72 win over the Cavaliers. Pierce delivered 19 points and Allen added 16 while teammate Kevin Garnett finished with 13 and 12 rebounds.

James actually led all scorers with 21 points for the Cavs, who host Game 3 tomorrow.

The Cavaliers played the last three quarters without Ben Wallace due to dizziness brought on by allergies.

Friday schedule:

Los Angeles Lakers at Utah, 8pm
Lakers lead series 2-0

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The Dallas Mavericks, Rick Carlisle and his agent were working out details of a contract agreement Thursday night. An expected news conference today may be pushed back to allow for the deal to be completed. But there are no serious snags, meaning Carlisle is on schedule to become the team's new coach.

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