What to say... what to say... Okay, let's start with the good stuff... This should be short. Sampson... nice job man! 3 scoreless giving up 2 hits with two strike outs. This looks promising for a 5th starter. They still need a new picture for Sampson though. That straining picture of him has got to go! What else was good? Biggio was 3 for 5 with a 2 runs scored and a home run(thus tying himself with Ryne Sandberg in career home runs by a 2 bagger at 282... then again he left 3 on so that sucks.
Now on to the bad. Lets start with Woody. Woody basically tried as hard as he could all game to see how close he could get to giving up 20 runs in an inning and get out of the inning w/out being scored on. He did a pretty good job at first giving up only 1 run through the first 4 innings, although it looked like he should have been down at least 5 or 6 to 3 by the time the 5th inning rolled around. Then the infamous 5th inning.. the same 5th inning that the Astros put up 3 errors and basically just gave the game away! Woody just looked old tonight. His fastball topping the radar at about 88 mph. He was hitting corners sometimes but it really seemed like he was just putting the ball right over the middle of the plate. And on to AE, the best defensive shortstop in the game. 2 errors in one inning! What!?! Seriously?? Not sure that's ever happened before and I doubt it will ever happen again. Kinda crazy... maybe his hair got in his way. AE only had 7 errors all last season... now he's sitting at 2 through 3 games. Odd. And to put a really wonderful(yes that's sarcasm) cap on the night, the Astros ended the series with the Pirates by losing 3 straight... If you want to take an optimistic note from tonight's game, you could be happy that at least the bullpen didn't blow the game tonight. The bullpen was eeeexxxccceeellleeent tonight going 4.1 innings between Sampson and Borkowski giving up no runs on 2 hits with 5 strike outs.
The Astros are off tomorrow and play again on Friday against the defending World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals at 7:05 pm on Friday. Hopefully Wandy can surprise the hell out of me and not get shelled. (sorry for the pessimistic attitude... but not a whole lot to be happy about in this young season.)
Filed under: