An odd night. We hope.

"It was just an odd night," said Rich Harden. Yep. Am I concerned about Harden, who seemed to have little more idea where his pitches were going than the Toronto hitters who went down on strikes for an extraordinary eight of their 11 outs while he was on the mound? Yes. But not as concerned as I am about Josh Hamilton, who looks exceptionally uncomfortable and completely out of sync at the plate. The Rangers issued 10 walks last night, after spending March as one of baseball's stingiest staffs as far as bases on balls were concerned. Granted, spring training statistics don't mean a whole heck of a lot (see: Vladimir Guerrero's homerless camp), but the hope is that the club's low walk totals in Arizona were far more indicative of what to expect from this staff than last night's location disaster. And that Hamilton's .373 batting average and .610 slug in camp suggests he can be more reliable in 2010 than he was in 2009. But he looks like he's overthinking things and guessing too much, and that makes him an easy mark at the plate, as we saw last year. Hamilton may never look as locked in this season as Nelson Cruz has for a month, and that's OK. But he needs to look a whole lot better than the 2009 version of himself, and in this admittedly tiny sample size of Games One and Two, he clearly hasn't. I'd like to see Julio Borbon drop a bunt to lead off the bottom of the first today. After taking a pitch. Thank goodness Monday's game ended well. Losses happen in baseball, but the real ugly losses are hard to take. Last night's was a big old can of bad ugly. I was hoping that "O Canada" and those plummeting temperatures might have put Harden in a good place after an uninspiring spring. The changeup was on for the most part, but that sort of scattered fastball command leads not only to gifted bases but also to lousy pitch counts and a tax on the bullpen, and while Harden is historically not one who regularly goes deep into games, there's nothing acceptable about a pitch count looking like a radar gun reading in the fourth inning. That certainly can't happen every fifth day. And as lost as Hamilton looks, that can't continue to handicap the lineup every day, particularly in the three hole. It was on odd night, as Harden said. If by that he meant "abnormal," I sure hope that turns out to be true. If there was anything normal about it, then uh-oh. C.J. Wilson has the task of putting Texas in a position to win the opening series this afternoon. He'd probably like for you to stop by his new blog (www.leftylefty.com) but I would also recommend you check out this video (and wiffle ball BP session) he filmed with the producers of "Lost": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X3S0SCVd7M The four full-season minor league affiliates open today. A full season of daily game recaps from the formidable Scott Lucas begins tomorrow morning. And finally, sometime later this morning the first 2010 installment of my weekly MLB.com column will turn up on TexasRangers.com. (This week's: Ranking the top 10 right-handed starting pitchers in the Rangers farm system.) I'll toss you a heads-up when it's posted. =========================================================== To join the free Newberg Report mailing list so you can get e-mail deliveries of every edition of the newsletter, daily minor league game recaps, and frequent Newberg Report News Flashes, go to www.newbergreport.com and click the "Mailing List" link on the top menu bar. (c) Jamey Newberg http://www.newbergreport.com Twitter @newbergreport