Astros Slip and Slide to Another Lose

Those pesky Red Birds tagged the Astros for 10 runs without the help of the resurgent Lance Berkman.

Hunter Pence had another bad day in the field as he slipped in the bottom of the 2nd inning which allowed another fly ball to fall in and roll towards the wall scoring Yadier Molina and giving Nick Punto a triple. The slip can be explained by a U2 concert that took over Busch Stadium recently and meant the grounds crew had to place new grass on the field for the game.

Then in the bottom of the 8th after Carlos Lee had gotten the Astros back in the game via grand slam Pence lost count of how many outs there were in the inning and allowed Punto to move up to third base thinking there were three outs. Punto would then score on an infield single to Angel Sanchez by John Jay. I don't bring this up to highlight Pence's candidacy for goat of the game (the pitching staff has that on lock) but more so to highlight his mentality.

This season has been tough, toughest for me as an Astro fan and probably toughest for most of the players on the team and with the trade deadline looming you can't fault these guys for having their minds wander. It's been tough and I've begun to wonder why I'm still watching this team. 

Jose Altuve had a couple of first this game, first run scored and first multi-hit game. He's now batting .412 but more impressive was how far the ball traveled when he made contact. He's certainly worthy of watching but he's not the reason why I continue watching.

As mentioned above Lee hit a grand slam and as surprisingly good that felt it's not the reason I'm still watching baseball.

There's a lot of turmoil for an Astros fan not only is the team bad, but there's uncertainty every where the front office, the trade deadline, the approval process, the product on the field, even uncertainty around George Springer has begun. It's not a fun time to be an Astros fan but we still watch. Maybe it's the late hour or the fact that I just spent 5 hours working on a blog for the worst team in the league what ever it is I can't pinpoint why I'm still watching. Why I'm sacrificing sleep to discuss the Astros. Why I put so much effort into this team.

Maybe I'll figure it out in the next few days but I'd like to hear why you're still watching.