Wandy Rodriguez' arm + Pedro Feliz' power = Astros win #7

What a truly odd, odd game.

Things started off with Pirate starting pitcher Chris Jakubauskas taking a Lance Berkman line drive off the back of his head. It was one of those stop and stare moments where you couldn't believe what had just transpired. Last report has Jakubauskas at Methodist Hospital receiving treatment. Hopefully he is doing as well as could be expected at this point. If we didn't already know that baseball is a cruel game, we certainly found that out tonight, as Chris took the loss in this game- the ultimate example of adding insult to injury.

Well wishes for Mr. Jakubauskas aside, there was a baseball game to be played, and the Astros played it in fairly dominant fashion. The batter following Lance Berkman in the first inning, Hunter Pence, laced a double down the left field line to score Berkman and Michael Bourn. 

Among those hits was Pedro Feliz' first home run as an Astro- a towering shot to left center that banged off the facade above the visiting bullpen. I guess the three hole suits him quite well.

Anyway, every Astro starter collected a hit, even Wandy Rodriguez. The Wand man went 7.1 innings, walked just one batter while striking out seven. His first win of the season came in his first start where the Astros actually scored runs while he was in the game. So, unless I'm missing something here, the Astros cannot lose if they score runs for Wandy. If there's any sort of fallacy to that logic I'm not seeing it. Brad Mills is certainly getting his 15 million dollar's worth out of Brandon Lyon- he pitched again tonight and struck out both batters he faced. That's when the game got interesting...

Matt Lindstrom was looking like his usual filthy self to start out the ninth innnig. He struck out Garrett Jones and induced a Lastings Milledge grounder to first and all seemed right with the world. Andy LaRoche, Ryan Doumit and Delwyn Young weren't all that impressed though, as each proceeded to get on base after those first two outs. Luckily, Lance Berkman is a pitcher-whisperer and he said the right things to calm down Laser Lindstrom because Ronny Cedeno flew out to Hunter Pence to end the game.

7-10. Another series sweep opportunity tomorrow. Inching closer to respectability. Bright sunshine and Brett Myers seems like a good combination for a Sunday afternoon.