If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Lance hit a fly ball to the base of Tal’s Hill straightaway center. Josh Anderson (yes, the ex-Astro who was traded straight up for Villareal) caught it with his back to home, turned, threw it to the cutoff man, who wasn’t nearly in time to tag Michael. Awesome. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a man score from second on a sac-fly. Too kewl.
The Astros Organization never thought real too much of Josh, who isn’t really different from Michael Bourn – good fielder, singles hitter, good baserunner. Josh has done fine in his appearances with the Braves this year – 36/127 with 7 doubles, 1 triple, 1 HR, with 10 SB and 1 CS – actually, looks a lot like Bourn’s numbers last year.
We’ll have to see how next year plays out for Bourn and Anderson to see if the Astros were right to prefer Bourn to Anderson. Josh has a .678 OPS this year, Bourn a .585 OPS over 585 PA.
Michael made 2 really really outstanding catches out there and so did Pence. Wiggy, on the other hand, messed up a fly ball and 2 runs scored (yes, he did drive himself in with a ball juuuuuust over the RF wall – hit a high outside FB.) And Valverde made a heads up tag of Brandon Jones in the 9th after he had rounded first after he (Valverde) had thrown the ball away to get a DP.
LaTroy Hawkins gave up his first ER as an Astro. It was bound to happen. He’s not Gagne 2003.
Valverde blew his first save since July 21. Location was REALLY bad. He ended up with the W, thank you Darin Erstad.
so
Philly wins.
Mets lose.
but
Brewers win. (Suppan and McClung beat Ryan Dempster. hehhehheh. Wasn’t it WONDERFUL seeing all those Brewers fans SERIOUSLY outnumbering the &*$&^@! Cubs fans???!!! hehhehheh)
And the Astros are out of the WC race now. I never thought this team would even sniff it, let alone stay in until almost the last day like 06.
Should I congratulate Miggy Tejada on his sole ownership of the NL GIDP record with 31?
Tags: Atlanta Braves, Houston Astros
saw the replay. not a stros fan, but that was awesome, one of the coolest things i’ve seen all year.
We have to give the Astros credit. They overachieved beyond anyone’s imagination. Ordinarily, my hopes would not be high for next year, but perhaps, with a couple of key pieces….
Oh well, you can’t be a baseball fan without being an eternal optimist. At least we’re not the Pirates or the Royals (yet.)
See you next year!
At least the didn’t sucker is in until the last day like in ’06.
This team really was a joy to watch, except for June and July. They had a like a 36-14 run and a 24-12 run at two seperate times. They had the best hitter in baseball for an extended period of time THREE times: berkman in May, Lee in July and August, and Wiggy after Lee’s injury. Imagine if Lee just stayed healthy. He was on a Pujolsian tear when he got hurt. Also, we saw the rejuvenation of Oswalt, inlcluding a 32.2 IP scoreless streak, and the great pickups (so far) of Wolf and Hawkins. Valverde payed off, Tejada was adequate, and the only bust trade Wade made last winter was the bourn/lidge one.
Had I been told that Ed Wade would make 50 different moves, and change two-thirds of the roster, and somehow this team would wind up possibly winning 86-87 games, I would’ve easily taken it.
So for that, I thank the Stros for keepong this season interesting for a long time (unlike in ’06 where it was only interesting for the last week and in ’07 where it was interesting never), and for overacheiving. Let’s hope that if they can put up 87 wins with a totally mediocre team, felled with unfortunate injurires, they can put up at least 90 next year.
I write for the Reds site on here, and I think all the Astros need is some pitching. sheets or sabathia and maybe a bullpen arm, then you can just let tejada/berkman/lee work their way through the opposing pitcher…business as usual.
smile
tejada is NOT an offensive force and really should be batting at the bottom of the lineup.
and i am glad they are showing the replay of bourn scoring because if baseball involves astros, the guys practically have to do a striptease or something to get any face on ESPN. i remember the game in which mo ensberg hit 3 homers – BBTN didn’t mention it until the very last thing in the show…
See? This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about, where I say I don’t want the team to have a run at the end of the season to give people hope for next year. The key word everyone keeps using is overachieving. Tejada got worse and worse as the season wore on and broke the GIDP record. Not cool. And I don’t think we can expect Wolf and Moehler to duplicate the best performances they’ve had in years.
And Lisa – the Astros are able to get attention when there’s lack of Yankees or Sawx highlights. There are a number of situations that don’t involve strip teases. So stop thinking about Astros doing strip teases!
grinning
well, i sure don’t think bout quintero or wiggy doing stripteases…
heh, espn? you mean the MTV of sports? yeah screw them showing stuff that actually deals with the sports part of sports, they focus on all the other garbage.
I just went and looked up tejada’s stats, and you’re right, .313 OBP from your second hitter? yikes. find someone to replace him at the top of the order and put him down lower, still not bad offensive numbers for a SS, plus you can count on him playing everyday.
well tejada doesn!t hold the distinction of having the more GIDP per AB than ausmus does. tejada had his 32 GIDP in 630 ABs for a .051% ratio while awesome brad had his 30 GIDP in 447 ABs for a .067% ratio. sorry lisa
Does anyone have a link to a video of the highlight of Bourn scoring from second? I read about the play but haven’t gotten to see it yet…