The Astros head into St. Louis to face the Cards in what should be a fun three games. After winning splitting a four game series with the Pirates, St. Louis looks to build on an impressive start by Chris Carpenter, who gave up just one hit in seven innings on Thursday. If Carpenter can perform well this season, the Cardinals have the potential to make some hay not only in the NL Central, but in the playoffs as well.
Regardless, this is our first weekend with real baseball since last fall, and I'm going to watch as much baseball as I can while I'm at home for Easter. A lot can be made of small sample sizes at this time of the season, where studs look like duds, and AAAA players are made out to be Babe Ruth. We can project, and prognosticate and attempt to dicpher trends, but ultimately the game is decided on the field.
That being said, the fun of baseball is using statistics, matchups and tendencies to guess what will happen in an at-bat, a game or a series. As the Astros take on St. Louis this weekend, what are our chances to win the series? Who will step up on a key early season road trip?
Mike Hampton, Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez will start for the Astros. Joel Pineiro, Adam Wainwright and Kyle Lohse will oppose them. Their careers against Houston:
| W-L | ERA | WHIP | K/9 | K/BB | |
| Joel Pineiro | 1-3 | 3.04 | 1.24 | 5.7 | 1.89 |
| Adam Wainwright | 5-0 | 2.32 | 1.03 | 7.2 | 2.86 |
| Kyle Lohse | 4-4 | 3.21 | 1.26 | 4.2 | 1.39 |
All have been impressive against the Astros, but we've been a team in flux over the past few seasons, so a lot of our team has never had the opportunities to perform against these three all that much.