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| Chris Capuano | Roy Oswalt |
| 3 - 0, 3.68 | 3 - 1, 3.34 |
Talk about things that don't bear that much examination: I was just looking at the Pirates series for some masochistic reason, with especial attention paid to the irony that has been put forth of the Astros outhitting those mighty Pirates for the series.
Alyson Footer quotes Garner as saying, "[w]e just didn't come up with the big hit when we needed it," and that's certainly true if you consider the astounding number of men left on during the set at PNC.
But in another light, hits weren't the problem. How could they be? We had 29 of them. That works out to 9.67 per game, for those of you numerically inclined. Coming into the series, we were averaging 6.50 hits per game.
Hitting wasn't the problem, slugging was. WE had 29 hits, but 26 of them were singles. We had a grand total of two doubles and one triple during the series. The Pirates--who totaled 27 hits--had four doubles during the series, four doubles and two homers. No great shakes, either, but it was more than we had, and that was why they won and we lost.
It didn't have to do with timing, it had to do with distance. We hit the ball OK, but we didn't hit it far enough.
What's weird about this power outage is that this team has been built on power more than average. Lance is gonna do well both ways, but Lee was acquired for his power, both rightfielders are strongest in the power department, and Morgan Ensberg showed last year that even when his average plummeted, his at-bats per homer are gonna hover around the same area.
When Carlos Lee said, "we didn't get the big hit, that's all," I don't think he was talking about an RBI single, I think he was talking about a big fly.
Lance had back-to-back games with extra base hits off righthanders before Maholm bamboozled him Tuesday. He managed a single in three trips vs. Duke Wednesday, and then had two hits and an RBI flyout against righties yesterday. Berkman walked a couple times, but was hitless off Capuano last Saturday, so I'm afraid that yesterday's momentum may not carry over.
I said it before, I'll say it again, it might be a good idea to sit Berkman, get Lamb a start at first while Lance chills a bit, and doesn't have his approach f&*^ed with.
Looks like Lamb is hitting .500 against lefties in the understandably limited opportunitie so far, unbelievably enough. Lance is slugging .238 against southpaws, how could it hurt?