It wasn’t the best I’ve seen him throw, and he gave up 2 walks and went to 8 pitch counts twice and 9 pitch count once, but he kept em off the basepaths fer SHER. He only had 2 hard hit balls – one by Hanigan to the LF bullpen (thank you Michael Bourn) and one to the Hill (thank you Michael Bourn) but the Danger in this Park (ask Roy last night or Leake today) is to left, where the Crawford Boxes beckon so invitingly.
Pence gave Wandy a 1 run lead with a solo homer to the CBoxes in the second, and that was all he needed. CJ added another solo homer with a smash above the CBoxes onto the tracks and Michael Bourn, hitting against a LEFTY!!! (YOU SEE THAT MILLSY???!!! A LEFTY!!!) drove in Castro and Jason Michaels with a double to seal the deal.
Poor Castro – he should have had another hit and an RBI, but Johnny Gomes trapped his liner to left with man on second 2 out in the 4th and sold it as a catch.
Lyons and Lindstrom came in and got em out in the 8th and 9th even though thre was no save – hey, the bullpen is teh sukc these days.
Speaking of sukc, Chris Sampson was sent down today – he still hasn’t recovered from the shoulder problem. Meanwhile, we’re trying out Fernando Abad, a 24 year old lefty. He was called up from AA, where he was a swingman – started 4 games, relieved in 10 over a total of 39.2 IP with an ERA of 2.50, Whip 1.41 and a .306 BAA. Although he gave up a lot of hits, he gave up only 6 walks/39.2 IP and 3 HR/39.2 IP – so we’ll see how he does.
He can’t be worse than Majewski/Daigle.
Can he?
Oh yeah – check out this nice article on Danny Arguello. Wonder why Jordan Lyles would merit a callup and he wouldn’t…
Anyway, we got to see Anderson Hernandez starat at SS today. Isn’t any better with the glove and he got a nice GIDP and nothing else.
By the way, Ed Maysonet came back from the DL a couple of weeks back and is hitting like crazy over the past 2 weeks. Would be nice to see him get called back up again (he spent almost the whole year on the DL – and didn’t get many ABs because of Matt Kata, who has lately returned to his normal level of suckage…)
Tomorrow, it’s lefty Wesley Wright vs lefty Ted Lilly – yes, the C*bs are back in town. Makes the beer guys happy…
Anyway, Ted Lilly is supposed to be on the trading block – and wouldn’t be real too surprised to see a lot of scouts – he always KILLZ the Astros, it seems. Even the time he gave up FIVE homers, he still won.
Hopefully, the guys will get it together for Wes tomorrow, and Millsy won’t leave him out there to throw 40 pitches in an inning. Anyway, Ted can be an example to Wes of how a very small lefty (and Lilly can’t be an inch over 5-9) can be a very successful ML pitcher.
Tags: Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, MLB
Well what do ya know……Wandy id officially *BACK*!!!! I wish he coulda done
this earlier, but I’ll take his wins now!! Gotta hand it to the Wandenater….he stuck
in there and gave the club a good win! I actually think Mills is trying to see where
Wes Wright *is* right now. Is he good enough to try out for a rotation spot next
year?? Or will he NEVER make it as a starter with the “big” club? I want to see
more of him, before I make up my mind. Good blog Lisa., you are one smart
baseball gal!! Thanks! Becky:)
Hey Lisa, I know Jason Castro isn’t hitting well, at least not yet, but I’m wondering how he’s looked to you both defensively and at the plate (since I’m not watching games until Drayton gets a clue). He’s young and was rushed to the bigs, so I expect mistakes. But does he look like he can handle the job?
Since I live ten minutes from Stanford, I’ve seen him several times and he looked pretty good — but that was with an aluminum bat and pitchers who didn’t have much more than a fastball and a curve.
I expect his hitting will come around once he has a year or two more; but how does he look to you? Can he handle the staff and run the game like Brad?
becky,
thanks. i try!!!
steve,
kind of unfair to compare any catcher to brad (except for bat)
but in my opinion
1 – castro is NOT good at blocking balls/preventing WP – needs a lot more work
2 – i don’t know whether or not he or arnesberg or the pitcher is calling the game, so it is tough to tell whether or not the pitch selection is his. so it is not fair to judge him here. of course i noticed that the WB, whose complaining got JR sent down, has stuck with Q
3 – he is decent to good with framing pitches and of course he is learning the umps’ different, uh, peculiarities. i check gameday to see how many pitches the ump got “wrong” when he is catching vs the other team’s pitcherr and so far, only 1 time it was worse significantly, but some umps won’t call borderline strikes for rookies
4 – as for the bat – well, what is good is that he is not swinging at pitches out of the zone. has a very good eye. bad is that he is still having trouble making good contact. but as you say, he was rushed and he wasn’t exactly tearing up AAA (as JR did. TWICE). seeing as how we are going nowheres, i have like NO problem with him struggling to adjust to ML pitching. also, he might could be overrtired from last year
and steve,
honey if you keep waiting for drayton to get a clue, you might as well start rooting for the giants
STEVE
Castro is not near as bad as blocking balls as i think lisa contends and one thing she overlooked is that castro has a cannon for an arm and is very accurate with it. His arm is much stronger and better that Brads ever was. So far he has thrown out 7 of 13 Attemped base stealers for a 54% ratio.He is handling the pitchers very well and all seem to like pitching to him. Since starting to catch Wandy on a reg basis wandy has gone 5 and 1 with an ERA of about 2.35 in those games.;. before that wandy was 3 and 10 and was struggling badly with an ERA of close to 6.00. He will eventually i think become a good ML hitter as of late he is starting to make much better contact. and has some decent power potentially a 20 Hr a year hitter. I truly think that he may end up being the best all around catcher the stros have ever had.
agree with sceptor 100% about the strength and accuracy of arm – sorry i forgot abut that. i SHOULD have said that.
and he has thrown out VERY good basestealers too, not just guys who are fasst but can’t run, you know what i mean (and brad was TEH awesomeness throwing out guys when he was younger – i mean, he was still good when he was 35…)
agree that wandy has looked like the old wandy from the day he started throwing to castro – i TOLD all yall that throwing to quintero was not good for him and one of these days i am gonna finish that entry i started on how wandy does throwing to different catchers – and you check it out – he was SIGNIFICANTLY worse last year throwing to Q than to pudge/towles
the guys who threw to castro at AAA are comfortable with him and as for roy – well, who knows? i do know he doesn’t call castro out there much, but i don’t know who is calling the pitches
but i STILL contend that castro has a LOT of work to do on ball blocking – check out the # of WP
his contact is decent and as i said, what i DO like is him not swinging at pitches out of the zone – but ida know about 20 homers a year – he sure seems like a singles/walks kind of guy with a couple doubles/homers here and there.
also, he is a tall guy and i am wondering if he’ll be moved from behind the plate in a few years.
(just like i am wondering why they don’t change towles to 2B like they did biggio instead of wasting him)
I do agree with lisa that castro does need more work at blocking WPs but he is far from being bad at it. I also don’t know how much of the game he does call, but like i said i think most of the astros pitchers seem comfortable pitching to him and he seems to handle himself well behind the plate. He has hit 2 Hrs so far and his first was off a very good pitcher Cain of SF and he hit it into the upper deck in RF at MM and it was recorded to have traveled 427 feet. I believe he will record many doubles and some triples as he seems to be a line drive hitter.
I also feel like lisa does in that he just might end up as a firstbaseman.