Game Recap : Astros at Padres 3/31/08

The battle between Cy Young hopefuls was won by the reigning NL Cy Young winner in Jake Peavy.  Peavy had basically a perfect night going 7 full innings, allowing just 3 hits and no runs while striking out 4.  That's just part of the story, as Peavy also went 1-1 at the plate, with 2 RBI's and drew a walk to be the hands down player of the game. 

Oswalt on the other hand, was a different story.  Roy battled all night long, but through his own admission, didn't have a feel for any of his breaking stuff and used mostly fastballs.  Roy, known for using few pitches to get through innings ended his 5 1/3 innings with 114 pitches. 

"To keep the pitch count down, you have to have breaking pitches to get guys out front," Oswalt said. "That's one of the reasons my pitch count got up so high. I was throwing fastball after fastball after fastball. I was trying to mix in the four-seamer and two-seamer. It was 20-pitch inning after 20-pitch inning.

"I kept looking up, trying to have a quick inning ... if you don't have a breaking pitch where you get guys on first pitch, second pitch, out front where they have to respect the fastball, they can sit on the fastball all night."

Roy just had an off night...  his fastball was pretty good, causing foul ball after foul ball from Padres hitters, but they basically knew what was coming on every pitch.  Any big league hitter, sitting dead red on fastball, is more than likely going to be able to hit even the best pitcher.  Roy ended the night with 5 1/3 innings pitched, 11 hits, 3 ER's and 6 strike outs to go with 1 walk taking the loss. 

Best Astros Player
I would say the best Astros player was Bourn.  He started off the game with a hit and then stole 2nd and then drew a walk later in the game and stole again.  He also made a damn nice running catch with bases loaded late in the game to save 3 runs from scoring.  Runner up would be Tejada who went 2-4 and made a couple of slick plays in the field.

Best Padres Player
Peavy.. and it's not even close.  For those of you who are fans of FanGraphs, Peavy's combined WPA (on the mound and at the plate) was .515.  The next closest player was Iguchi for the Padres at .77.  Iguchi had a nice night at the plate going 3-5 with a run scored and 2 doubles.