Houston Astros Baseball

Astros Make It Five

The Astros have rolled their way into a 5 game winning streak combining for 41 runs over that span. Those 41 runs have more than doubled the opposing run total during the same period.



Why are The Astros so good? It's pretty simple, we are scoring runs and lots of them. Our offense has been consistently hitting starting pitching, which increases their pitch count, which dives into their bullpen faster. Also, we have generally been leading and thus faced the other teams "mop up" bullpen arms over their solid set-up men. However, this isn't always the case as we saw when we hit The Padres Jake Peavy and elite set-up arm Heath Bell.

What's the difference from a week ago? It's hard to narrow the change down to any one thing. As Matsui has recently joined, Pence has starting hitting, and Coop shuffled the lineup. It's fair to say that all of those things combined to give this new offense a jolt. One major plus that I've noticed this past week is that we aren't doing ALL of our damage in one inning. Typically our offense has been a "one and done" type team. We have a big inning, which usually consisted of at least one HR and called it a day, hoping the bullpen could hold on. This isn't the case lately and I think that can be attributed to Coop's lineup. Just yesterday the Reds announcers noticed that very detail and mentioned "There is no easy out in their lineup". This was without Bourn and Wigginton as well.

Can this roll continue? Probably not at the same rate. We have been hitting above expectation's individually and have been riding Berkman's hot streak. However, there is no reason to beleive that 5-6 runs isn't possible on a daily basis. After all, we still have a few player who are actually hitting under their normal range. With this offense, if our starters can regularly put up quality starts (Which we currently rank 3rd in the NL, with 13) then there is no reason why we can't win 60% of our games.

Negatives: The only real negative I see is that Shawn Chacon isn't likely to continue his beyond impressive starting pitching. he has been just about the best Astro starter so far and that isn't likely to be continue. Hopefully, if he implodes it's on a night where we score some runs.

Carlos Lee still doesn't like hitting 5th. It's understandable that he doesn't want to hit 5th, and even though he has seem to quiet down his displeasure with the situation it's clear that he prefers to hit with a slugger behind him. The reason being pitches. When Carlos bats with a slugger behind him he gets better pitches to hit and Carlos has said "I Like To Swing The Bat". Unfortunately, with Carlos batting after both Lance, and Miggy he sees less fastballs over the plate because opposing pitchers aren't as worried about walking him since there isn't a major HR threat behind him. The difference is pretty clear. Last year at this time, Carlos was leading the NL in RBI's, this year he isn't even the top in any stat just on The Astros. He is getting less opportunities to hit for power and although he will most likely see an increase in On Base Percentage, that isn't quite the reputation he would want. Batting 4th (69 AB's) Carlos walked once, batting 5th (17 AB's) Carlos has already walked 3 times. All of his HR's have come as the #4 batter, and although his batting avg has gone up, along with his on -base-percentage, his slugging has gone down and that's the reason he doesn't like hitting 5th. However, as a fan, I would say that it seems to be working and I definitely wouldn't change anything now.



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