Tonight, with their worst pitcher pitching, the Astros busted out the whuppin stick against Dallasite Clayton Kershaw WITH MEN ON BASE!!!! I mean, it was quite the night – even Jason Michaels managed to get a hit – a GR double into the 5-7 restaurant (and yes, it is the old 9 Amigos place, in case yall wondering) and Pudge Rodriguez hit 2 groundball singles.
Russ Ortiz wasn’t exactly good – five walks, 3 hits, 1 HBP, 118 pitches, 64 strikes. He didn’t have a single 1,2,3 inning, went to 3-2 counts on 7 of the 23 hitters he faced, walked 2 on 4 pitches. Somehow, don’t ask me how, he even managed to strike out Manny as one of his 2 Ks, and he only gave up the 3 runs he gave up in the first inning after giving up 2 leadoff walks and.
Wesley Wright pitched a good scoreless inning, Fulchino made a serious mistake to Manny who hit it like 800′ to deep center, Hawkins pitched a scoreless 8th and THEN, it was fun city with Valverde.
And oh MAN, it was one HECK of an inning.
Furcal who is FAST, hit a bunt just to the right of the mound which a good fielding pitcher would have easily handled, but Valverde overran. One on. Then the O-Dawg hit a 3-2 FB RIGHT up the middle, and it hit Valverde on the leg (or was it foot) and after hopping around and looking around, he managed, while falling on his back, to throw the ball to Lance, who caught it, don’t ask me how, falling across first juuuust before O-Dawg got there, but unfortunately, the first base ump called him safe and he was CLEARLY out. 2 on, no out. Uh-oh, because it is Manny at the plate. Unlike Casey, the Manny didn’t look at strike one and strike 2, but hit pitch #1 almost to the wall in deep right.
Sigh of relief.
But then, we notice that Valverde is limping badly, hopping on his left foot a good deal. Sampson is up in the pen, just in case. And Valverde has trouble finding the strike zone, walking Ethier to load the bases.
And somehow, he gets both Loney and Martin swinging at an inside splitter for big strike 3.
Kaz Matsui had a good night – got an RBI on a groundout and one on a bases loaded walk – no hits, but 2 walks and he scored runs from those walks. Tejada had another good night – a bloop 2 RBI single and an RBI grounder double down the RF line. Carlos hit a ball out of the park. Keppinger has a 7 game hitting streak.
You notice that tonight’s game had easily twice the attendence of last night’s game – it was all us grrrls hoping against hope to see Bradley Awesomemus.
sighhhh
No luck. But you know what? We got to see Russell Martin, who is actually quite hot along with Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp and James Loney – also VERY hot. Yessirree, I think I am most DEFINITELY gonna hafta to draft a few more of those boys onto my fantasy team, I surely am.
Tags: Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, MLB
IT was a good nite for us allright. I thought that Berkman made one heck of a play at first sretching out to get that errant throw from Valverde and the runner looked out to me. Either way the ump blew it cause the ump should have called the hitter out for running way out of the baseline the last 30 or so feet.
Matsui actually had a good solid hit in the third inning than stole second and scored on miggy’s double. It was actually a well hit ball to center in the 8th that kaz drove in a run on the sac fly and not on a grounder. I definitely thought kaz was the main catalyst for the offense tonite setting the tone early and was almost in the middle of every rally.