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Today was a long, agonizing, and frustrating day for Astros fans as they witnessed the good guys lose two times in the same day for the first time in at least 6 years. Not only did they lose, but the Astros put a lot of heart and soul in these two games yet they ended up losing on very close plays and errors. They wanted the bats to come alive, but not in the way that they did today.
In the first game, we lost 9-7. Wandy Rodriguez was expected to pitch multiple innings as an effort to conserve the bullpen for game two of the double header. But what happened in the first inning was not too fantastic. Dexter Fowler hits a hard foul ball to CJ, but CJ can't coral the ball. So that's an E5. Then Jordan Pacheco hits a triple, scoring Fowler. Wandy throws a wild pitch that was swung at by Carlos Gonzalez So the 2nd error of the inning is issued as the 2nd Rockies run scores. Then Cargo doubled. Tulo followed with a double, scoring Cargo to give the Rockies a 3-2 lead. Then Doug Brocail went to the mound. Then Wandy got Todd Helton to ground out. Then he got Cuddyer to strike out on a nice curve in the zone. Then he throws 3 balls to Wilin Rosario. Then he gave up a 2-run homer to Rosario. Then the score was 5-2. Then Wandy got the DJ to ground out. And Then! The inning was over.
So then we went on to the 2nd inning where Nicasio struck out the side. Then in the 3rd inning Wandy gave up another run. Eventually Wandy would be tabbed for 7 runs with only 4 of them earned due to errors.
On offense, we did pretty well, scoring 7 runs. Jed Lowrie hit a homer. Several players including Schafer, Altuve, Lowrie, Lee and Johnson had at least two hits each with Schafer and Lee edging out with 3 hits a piece. Amazingly, none of the other Astros got a hit in this game.
Fernando Rodriguez gave up two runs to break up the 7-7 tie once and for all in the game en route to his 5th loss this season. F-Rod seems pretty prone to the meltdown.
In the 2nd game, we lost 6-7. I thought the lineup in this second game was surely setting us up for failure. Bogey in the 3-spot? Really Mills? But then Bogey got a groundball single up the middle in his first AB in the second game. Then he hit a 2-run homer later on. I guess I was wrong and Brad Mills was right... Jordan Lyles really looked lost in the first inning, giving up deep ball after deep ball. A homer from Fowler is also included in that as well. Lyles definitely needs to refine his secondary pitches. He has not shown he can command those at the major league level. In his MLB debut, Lyles was commanding the fastball just fabulously, but what was evident was that Lyles still neeeded to develop his secondary stuff. And he still needs to today. However, it's going to be hard to choose another 5th starter with Weiland still on the DL since it seems everybody is doing terrible at OKC. An-Rod gave up 7 earnies in 3 IP. Paul Clemens is just not pitching well. And the Astros are also showing signs of pitching problems as well.
Chris Snyder hit his 3rd homer of the year and so did Justin Maxwell. Maxwell's homer was absolutely crushed with Maxwell crushing the 2nd longest homer in the majors this year at 471 ft. See gif image below.
A bit of an odd move by Brad Mills in the bottom of the 8th inning with runners on 2nd and 3rd. Xavier Cedeno was brought in to face Carlos Gonzalez, a lefty after replacing Wilton Lopez. Well they decided to intentionally walk Cargo to bring up Tulowitzki since there's a base open. So Brad Mills wasted Cedeno's arm just to IBB a guy. The Astros then brought in Fernando Rodriguez to face Tulo with the bases loaded. Was this a better idea than letting Cedeno pitch to Cargo? Anyway, they got the out and it wasn't the reason for the Astros losing.
The Rockies won the 2nd game on a walk-off triple by Dexter Fowler, who certainly had the Astros' number tonight, going 7-9 with 5 runs scored and 3 RBIs. As for what happened during the rest of the game, I'd rather not have to recap that part of a traumatic experience.