When asked about Kyle Lohse after his Rangers debut in which he gave up six runs in five innings, Jeff Banister noted, “There’s still stuff there,” which is manager-speak for “there’s still not much stuff there.”

You know how it’s Christmas Eve and it just occurs to you that you still haven’t bought a gift for your wife so you dash off to the twenty-four hour drug store at the corner and walk up and down the aisles desperately looking for something, and to your horror you discover the shelves are completely empty because it’s Christmas Eve and they have been picked over clean, and in a fit of panic you turn the corner to aisle ten hoping for something, anything, and there it is, down at the end, on the bottom, like seeing the Emerald City after a long journey down the Yellow Brick Road, one lone leftover gift covered in dust and surrounded by cobwebs, and you push your cart there as fast as it can go to make sure some other poor sap isn’t going to beat you to it, and when you get there you discover it’s a deluxe laser nose hair trimmer which you rationalize is exactly what she wants because you don’t think she has one of those and because it is literally the last item on the shelf, and you throw it in your cart triumphantly and take it home and wrap it and put it under the tree and then wonder why the next morning a look of total and utter joy fails to cross her face and you realize that she realizes it was, literally, the least you could possibly do?

Kyle Lohse started for the Rangers last night.

It brought back memories.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

Tommy Milone (1-2, 5.45) vs. A.J. Griffin (3-0 , 3.06)
Game time: 2:05 pm

How the Twins hit against Griffin.
How the Rangers hit against Milone.