Sometimes, I don’t even know why I bother to insist on watching.

Of course, all yall know I just LUUUVVVV me some Wand Man, and I wasn’t gonna miss one of his starts. And he pitched just fine, except for giving up a homer to Matt Holliday. And then he strained his right leg running out a sac bunt turned FC in the 5th – when the trainers came out to check his leg, I just about cried, because I knew what THAT meant, and it’s Carpenter out there, who pretty much shuts the Astros DOWN (at least, the Berkman-less Astros down).

Then the second base ump made a BAD call on Bourn and called him out on a steal – a call SO egregiously wrong that even the Cards announcers said that Bourn was obviously safe.

Husband said – hey, the ML umps are as crooked as the NBA umps (who he thinks are conspiring with the League officials and networks to keep low popularity teams like San Antonio out of the playoffs, or at LEAST the finals.)

amusement

And people are sooooooo horrified about steroids – ooooooooh, they destroy the “purity” of the game. They aren’t a bucket of warm spit next to anything the umpires could do, that is fer SHER. And the umps certainly are not accountable to anyone for mistakes or “mis takes.”

sigh

Fulchino pitched very well. He gave up a run to Carpenter on a double just inside the LF line, then Quintero had another passed ball (I swear I can’t stand watching Pudge OR Quintero try to block balls. Guess I’ve been spoilt by Ausmus. And Towles, too.) and Carp went to third, then home on a sac-fly to center – Michaels can’t hit his way out of a wet paper bag, can’t catch a cold (he damm near didn’t catch an easy fly out) and he couldn’t throw out a slow footed pitcher. And he couldn’t jump up to catch a homer hit by Holliday juuust over the fence (where is Bourn when you need him???!!!)

I think Drayton made a terrible mistake by refusing to trade either Tejada or Valverde at the deadline. Yes, the team is worse without them, but the team is bad WITH them, too.

Now we have no Berkman, no Oswalt (surrrrre he’ll be back for Tuesday’s game and we’ll have Paulino again because they can’t send Bazardo back down if he’s called up and it’s better to have someone we ALREADY know sucks, right?)

So now we get to see how well Norris does. Not that I’m expecting miracles, mind. I just hope that Coop doesn’t mess him up but GOOD as he does every single other young guys who has been called up.

Oh yeah. And can we please PLEASE get rid of this stupid “aggressive is good” mindset – at least in OUR minors? I’m getting unspeakably tired of watching opposing pitchers get 3 hitters out on 7 or 8 pitches. There is no excuse for praising guys who popout on 1 pitch, or GIDP instead of striking out on 3 pitches. At the very least, it takes more pitches to strike a hitter out. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Pence has had significant trouble at the plate since 2 weeks before the ASB and his trouble coincides with his taking fewer pitches and walking significantly less. And that called third strike he took in the 7th with men on first and third and 2 out was absolutely positively a perfect strike, right down the middle. He had darn well better been shaking his head at his lousy performance. THIS time the ump was right.

Ump’s incorrectly called pitches (according to Gameday:

Wandy: 2 balls called strikes and 5 strikes called balls

Fulchino: 3 strikes called balls

Valverde: 1 strike called ball

Carpenter: 1 ball called strike; 2 strikes called balls

Gee. Wonder which team got the better calls?

Tags: Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 am and is filed under fulchino, Wandy Rodriguez. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.