Roy Oswalt won at Busch and held Albert Pujols, his nemesis, who had a .343 BA and a .410 OBP against him, hitless and walkless. Roy was absolutely AWESOME!!! Threw 102 pitches over 7 innings, 78 for strikes, scattered 8 hits – only gave up 1 run on back to back doubles to Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders – walked NONE and K’d 7. He was ROY tonight, yes he was!!! He almost back to his old fluid motion, just a bit quicker – got mostly GB outs and looked GOOD.
Matt Morris almost matched him for 5 innings – gave up 1 BB and 5 hits, but one of those hits was a 2 run HR by Jason Lane and there went his ball game cuz he wasn’t beating ROY tonight, nope.
Jason Marquis pitched 2 innings in relief, giving up a solo HR to Biggio.
And Willy Taveras got his FIRST walk this month !!!! He up to 24 for the year!!!! I was SO impressed – with 2 out and 2 on, he DIDN”T MAKE AN OUT!!! FOR ONCE!!!! Unfortunately, Biggio did – and he had a GIDP earlier, too.
Brad Lidge had a 2 inning save – only 19 pitches, though.
So Roy wins #19 (and I hope he can get that magic #20 next week against the Cubs) and now we lead Philly, who lost to the Mets, by 2 1/2 games.
We gotta get on a roll and mean it.
Tomorrow Brandon Backe goes up against Chris Carpenter, Mr. Ace Person – Mr Beat out Dontrelle (who looked B A D tonight) for the CY.
Brandon needs to pitch like he did last year when he almost no-hit the Cards in the playoffs…
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB, St. Louis Cardinals
Quick Hits: For your planning purposes:here’s the current postseason schedule! As predicted, all weekend games are on the road, and if push comes to shove in the NLCS, Game 6 will be in the afternoon (maybe Game 1, too); Astro-POV takes on last night’s game at The Dugout (who also has a preview of tonight’s game; and also look at her Escape from Houston post, too;) and The Crawfish Boxes; My buddy Ryan (who comments here as RyanB) emailed me this morning to tell me that the Brewers had announced their 2006 schedule, and that they would be opening up the first homestand at New Busch. Here’s their press release, which doesn’t actually say they open at New Busch, but does say when the Cards are coming to town, which I think reflects well on the Cardinals’ ability to draw there, and check out the subtitle; 2006 will be the first time the Crew opens at home since 2005!!! The long national nightmare is over! Sheesh.), and here’s their 2006 schedule. Interestingly, the Cards don’t have a similar schedule available (those that don’t: Angels, Astros, Blue Jays, Braves, Cards, Cubs, DBax, Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Nats, O’s, Padres, Pirates, Rangers, Red Sox, and Twins.