This is the first time that I’ve seen Lyles pitch where I thought – this kid looks like he just might could be a ML pitcher. The Rangers are a good hitting club and Jordan more than held his own tonight – threw LOTS of strikes before he tired in the 7th. Yes, he struck out the side in the 7th – and he’s not really a strikeout pitcher, but he really struggled, throwing 25 pitches.
The line says 7 IP, 7 H (2 HR, 1 triple, 4 singles) 2 BB and 6 K. However, it doesn’t say that he came out throwing strikes, threw 17 first pitch strikes to the first 23 hitters. He threw a first pitch FB down the middle to Michael Young, who sent it over the RF fence and later Nelson Cruz hit a mid-calf high curveball over the LF fence. He didn’t go to a 3 ball count until the 5th inning, when he gave up a 3-1 walk to Kinsler.
It helped that the HP ump did an excellent job calling balls and strikes, and Jordan himself, hit the glove more times than not.
Real trouble tonight was that the Astros are playing short 2 players – Pence’s elbow is hurting too much for him to swing and Towles has a pulled hamstring. Not sure exactly why they aren’t on the DL, but I guess that Drayton doesn’t want to pay anything to call up anybody who is actually hitting – meaning someone not on the 40 man.
Reason the Astros lost, in spite of outpitching the Rangers, is that the hitting and scoring was done by Bourn and Bourgeois, who looks as if he got hurt again tonight – he could hardly run his last AB. Bourn hit 2 doubles and a single and ROE – it really SHOULD have been a hit because it was a ball that went to Kinsler and Bourn was already on first by the time Kinsler gloved and dropped it. He stole 2 bases. Bourgeois hit the ball hard twice – the first fly ball would have been off the scoreboard at home and the second was off the wall at the Ballpark. Keppinger drove Bourn in the first and Bourgeois in the 3rd.
I don’t know whether he was instructed to steal second base in the 3rd with 1 out (seriously, really, what the HECK – the guy doesn’t steal bases and can’t run fast) but Clank then hit a single, which would have driven him to 3rd – and yeah Michaels Kd (had another ofer game), but youneverjknow, maybe he would have had a different approach. And this was early in the ballgame before CJ Wilson found his control (yes I watched the game to stare at CJ – he’s SEXY) and shut the Stros down.
Dumb stuff like that.
Also, the fact that Kepp GIDP and grounded out weakly with men on second and third. Also that Clank didn’t drive in any, and basically, no one in the lineup is hitting for power. When Bourn and Bourgeois are your power threats, it’s not good. Wallace has been slumping badly for about a week now – lots of bad swings and strikeouts – needs to get his stance re-adjusted, I think.
Sergio Escalona, who had pitched pretty well, came in to start the 8th to face Josh Hamilton with the Astros leading 4-3 (too many opportunities to drive in runners squandered) and threw him a fastball up and in and it rocketed into the upper decks, tying the score.
Del Rosario pitched 2.1 innings but threw a FB down the middle to Mitch Moreland who hit it out. The Rangers hit 4 homers just tonight. I don’t remember when the Astros last hit a homer or who hit it. And unless you string a bunch of singles together, the small ball approach so dearly loved by announcers/writers who miss The Good Old Days has a tough time beating the slugging approach. Usually, the team that hits the most homers wins and yes I DO remember the game when the Astros hit 5 solo homers off Ted Lilly and the Cubs and still lost.
Tomorrow, we face Colby Lewis, who is licking his chops, hoping to lower his ERA and pick up a W as his team is facing our most homeriffic starter.
Not that I care about the Silver Boot, but it would be nice to not get swept. We get Thursday off – I’m going to review our “prospects” in the minors, see who is doing anything worth noting.
And speaking of worth noting, JD and Brownie noted that 8 years ago, a pitcher named Rodrigo Rosario got his first (and only) ML win against the Rangers in 2003. He spent most of the year at AAA, threw 87 innings over 15 games. He never pitched after 03 – wonder why. I don’t remember him at all. UNlike, say, Wilfredo Rodriguez, who was sent down/punished for pitching to Barry Lamar back in 01 when Larry Dierker didn’t want him to hit his McGwire record breaking homer in Houston. He disappeared from baseball until 04, when he pitched 46 innings for 4 Organizations. I wonder if something happened to him, or if everyone blackballed him for throwing a hittable FB to one of the 3 best hitters ever.
youneverknow…
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB, Rangers, Texas Rangers
Ed Wade will NOT call up a minor league guy. He and Drayton are “satisfied”
with the mess they BOTH created. If a new owner had the money to do it, I’d
let Carlos go, and eat his contract But…….. since it never snows in hell, we’re
stuck watching him pop up. Lyles has pitched well enough to have 3 wins already.
He’s gonna be a real gem in the rotation. If someone could work with Happ, and get him back to pitching…….a rotation of Norris, Happ Lyles, and Wandy would look REAL good next year! Gawd……this team makes me CRAZZZZY! Becky:(
I wonder if they’d consider doing this
http://nybaseballdigest.com/?p=36887
becky
it proves that “team batting average” is not necessarily correllated to wins – last year we were last in the NL, this year we’re in the middle – and we have fewer wins
raul,
jesus montero is another catcher who can’t catch – and he can’t hit for power neither. BAD trade. although i’m sure that wandy is going to get traded to SOMEone for not much – see Fast Eddie’s other trades…
We’ve hit 41 HRs and given up 87(!).
I believe the last HR hit was Hunter’s on June 13th against Atlanta. That’s NINE games ago. Wow.
To find a homer hit by someone in the lineup, you’d have to go back almost two weeks to Matt Downs on June 10th. And he’s not even a regular.
To find someone in today’s starting lineup who last hit a homer, you have to go all the way back to June 7 — that’s right, FIFTEEN games ago, when Mr. eighteen-million-dollar-man manged to hit one of his very few out. Looks like Drayton is paying $3,000,000 per homer run so far…
Also, note that we now how two of the top 20 best pitchers in the league — basically two aces in Wandy and Bud. They have combined for 33% of the team’s wins. wow.
Wilfredo Rodriguez! Wow, what a memory.
Remember the male fan who caught Bond’s 70th homer said he had an “estrogen rush”?
One week after Maury Brown’s big Jim Crane stories, the Houston Chronicle still hasn’t mentioned any of it (nor have any of the TV stations). It’s like something out of the Soviet Union, circa 1980. I’d love to know how much money Richard Justice is making. He’s not worth $10 these days. I guess he’s content with his life of kissing butt and eating free food in the press box.
steve,
i am absolutely DELIGHTED with how far bud has come in a year. He is in fact pitching like an ace. Just like Wandy – and you know how i feel about the wand-man. makes me worried that bud would actually bring a better return than wandy. if only clank would start hitting homeres again he’d be easier to dump.
ann,
i think that richard has made it more than clear that he is NOT a reporter any more. really a shame. he used to be good. it’s possible that carne has the $$$ and influence with the chron because he is a big advertizer, but the tv reporters? the radio guys??? the houston press muckrakers???
interesting that he is so positive that crane and his basketball guy are shoo-ins when crane is actually doing pretty much exactly what frank mccourt did in 04 with the dodgers. and i hear tell that some of the owners are opposed to crane. i HOPE that’s right. i know that the astros don’t own the few parking lots there are and am not sure that they own the tickets like the dodgers did but i am REAL sure that the owners are going to have to find some kind of way to deal with that loophole seeing as how frank didn’t break any LAW i know of doing what he did. he just broke the franchise.
bud approved mccourt because mccourt promised to keep the payroll low (break the union is #1 to bud) and now crane is promising to not spend money on the team. i HOPE bud has learned to only sell to billionaires like loria who HAVE money they won’t spend
As far as why the Press hasn’t chimed in, is it because Champion Energy is tied to Crane, Champion advertises (or did) on 1560 the Game, and Sean Pendergast (the Press’s primary Sports reporter) has a daily radio show on 1560?
Agree with anon, that it’s like something out of Pravda or TASS… Inconceivable that such a large deal in another market would fly by with the lack of scrutiny that this deal is getting. I’m not even that irritated by the allegations of racism by Crane’s managment, or the callous behavior he evidently displayed in his divorce, per the Press article from 2000. What bugs me is that the local media seems to think that the problems with the Astros stemmed from a lack of spending wisely, and that Crane’s group will somehow come up with an infusion of new money to keep up with the Cards and Cubs. From what’s been leaked about the specifics of the deal, that’s not very likely. An owner this fiscally sensitive is not going to change the things that irritated us about Uncle D: the low-balling of draft picks, the ridiculous outside food and drink policy, the ticket prices, etc…
“What bugs me is that the local media seems to think that the problems with the Astros stemmed from a lack of spending wisely, and that Crane’s group will somehow come up with an infusion of new money to keep up with the Cards and Cubs. From what’s been leaked about the specifics of the deal, that’s not very likely.”
– This is exactly right. When Jim Crane stood up, on Day 1, and essentially told the assembled media that his group won’t be subsidizing losses, that should have set off alarms. Instead, it was barely a footnote in one article.
No one expects a new owner to overpay for a team and then spend another $200 million on players, but if Jim Crane’s plan is to “build from the bottom,” that’s Royal- and Pirate-speak for “maybe we’ll have a good year 10 years from now.”
People are bashing McCourt, and I hope MLB gets rid of him, but the Dodgers have actually been a decent to above-average team under McCourt, with the team’s first playoff wins since 1988, etc. And with even a modicum of decent management and an owner who doesn’t pay himself $25 million per year, the Dodgers could be good again very soon.
The Astros, on the other hand, are MLB’s worst team and have one of the worst five farm systems. There’s no way out of this mess except to spend, and for reasons that absolutely no one has explained, the media seems to think Crane is going to spend even though everything he’s said has implied otherwise.
Even worse, if Maury Brown’s reporting is correct, Crane’s 30-something “partners” are only involved in the purchase, and they have no liability for losses, cash calls, etc. If that’s true, then it seems unlikely Crane will spend money unilaterally. Doing that would be a gift to his partners.
The whole thing is really demoralizing. I can’t believe the same writers who are obsessed with the Dodgers and Mets are making no connection to the Astros, even though the Astros are in the worst shape of the three — by far.
grayjay and ann,
I don’t know what else to say. I understand that MLB doesn’t give a shtt about a small market team like houston, but why on earth there aren’t ANY reporters who report on baseball who can’t be bothered to talk about it – well, ESPECIALLY because if is McCourt all over again – i mean with an owner with no money coming in – well – he can’t steal the stadium/tickets/parking – but he sure can keep this team this bad for many years.
and bud is intent on trying to screw the players and as long as the favored clubs are OK he doesn’t care about the rest
i don’t want to hear one thing from baseball reporters about how steroids continued for so long – and THAT was obvious and undser their noses. here we have a whole giant city with reporters who can’t be bothered to do any investigating/reporting
and if anyone thinks that crane is gonna spend money – well all i can say is that he couldn’t be bothered to find a BASEBALL man for his CEO. he intends to hire a LOUSY basketball guy
That was no cup of coffee, Wilfredo. That was an espresso.