Written by Baqqs on 4:45 PM
Sunday, April 27
The Astros 6 game winning streak was ended yesterday(Sat) as The Cards squeaked out a victory to even the series at Busch Stadium. Today, the Astros faced off against The Cards in the rubber match at Busch trying to win this series and even up the season series versus The Cards. Unfortunately, the Astros decided they didn't want to play baseball today. Simply from a fans perspective The Astros looked careless and tired, even though for a second straight game tensions ran high. The Astros didn't get outplayed, but looked terrible as a mediocre pitcher made them look awful at the plate. Mark my words, The Cardinals are not a very good team. In every game in this series The Astros just looked confused and beat down by a clever Dave Duncan (Cardinals pitching coach). In each game of the series the Astros had fewer hits, and maintained very low walk numbers. The Astros should have easily won yesterday. How often are we going to get 3 HR's and lose the game? It is absolutely pathetic that all three of the HR's hit were solo shots considering who hit them. But that fact seemed to be the game plan for this series, "The fewer the base runners, the better"
I know I may sound a bit upset, but that's because I am. At the plate we were simply out smarted and left dumbfounded as our hot-hitting streak was abruptly cut short. What makes this loss even more sour is the fact that we now head to Arizona to face off against the best team in baseball, we will be lucky to walk out of Arizona with a win. Keep in mind, that isn't because of how bad the Astros are playing, but more of respect to The D-Backs.
Positives and Negative of Cardinals Series:
Positives:
Lance Berkman remains extremely hot, and seeing as he is our more important hitter, if he is on we always have a chance to win. However, he may cool off when we face some good pitching in Arizona.
Shawn Chacon showed some heart in his past start. He obviously didn't have his best stuff on Friday, (the rain delay likely responsible) but he was able to limit the damage with some quality pitches at some pivotal times. He is clearly trying to earn himself a paycheck this next off-season.
Valverde looks to have turned a corner. In his last 4 appearances he hasn't given up any earned runs and has either a save or a win in those games. Just as important he is striking people out with both his fastball and his splitter.
Negatives:
Our offense is dead! I know that you can't expect teams to stay hot forever, however, all three of these games were very winnable we just continued to have bad at-bats. By that I mean, we didn't work the counts as a team, and allowed average pitchers to to dominate us and work deep into games. It's always been my philosophy that if you can't hit the starter, at least make him thrown more pitches to you and pray you can get into their bullpen.
Because of the lack of baserunners, we were unable to steal a single bag during this series. (Keeping in mind were leading all of baseball in SB's going into St. Louis)
Carlos Lee has been pretty cold. Minus his first pitch jump on an Izzy fastball on Friday Lee has been cold at the plate. Luckily for us, the hits he is getting are almost always for extra bases, but for Lee standards he is having a typical April, but bad at-bats. My theory remains that most of his struggling has to do with his spot in the order. However, I don't think that moving him anywhere else would really benefit the team positively. He is in a similar situation with Albert Pujols in the fact that he has little protection behind him (for now) and isn't seeing as good of pitches as he is used to. The difference is, although Albert will rarely get a fastball over the plate considering how unbelievably often he gets walked, he capitalizes on those few hittable pitchers and maintains his slugging. Carlos on the other hand seems to press, meaning he is too anxious and wants to hit the ball hard almost too much.
Bourn is slumping. I honestly believe that Bourn is going to be a very good overall player. Has a chance to win gold gloves in the outfield and set the bat in stealing bases. The problem becomes, what do you do when he can't get to first to steal any bases? Do you move him down in the order, maybe try some bunting, or platoon him with Erstad in favorable match ups? For now, I believe that this is a slump the Astros as a team will have to weather. Seeing as The Astros plan on him being in CF for years to come he will just need time to work things out himself, and I think he will. his season reminds me alot of Spring Training. He started out hot and gradually declined. I don't believe this is because pitchers have found a weakness, but more so that Bourn isn't working as hard. It's a weird thing to accuse, but as a fan we can kind of tell when a batter is really focused. Bourn was this way to open Spring Training. He watched every pitched into the glove of the catcher, he ran out every ball, he worked most counts and seemed visibly upset when he didn't succeed. This was the same during the first two weeks of the season, he wanted to impress and worked his tail off. Now it seems like their is less urgency, less focus, and less intensity. I could be wrong, but either way I do believe he is our CF for the next 5 years and he will hit around .275/.350. (Which would be acceptable)
Pence looks bad at the plate. He has been hitting better recently and has significantly raised his batting avg. but the fact remains that he isn't seeing pitches and because of that, isn't driving the ball. It's hard to believe, but his walk's are down from last year and his strike-outs are up. The most telling stat is his ISO (isolated power). Last year Hunter's ISO was .217 against this years .135. As reference, Berkman's 2008 ISO is .407 and Tejada .240. The effect Hunter has on this lineup is quite clear. When he was hitting last week the rest of our lineup was hitting, when he isn't our lineup isn't. His importance is based on the fact that when he hits, Lee has protection and hits better, their are runners on for Towles, we get back to the top of our order fast, he provides pop at the bottom of the order, putting continuous pressure on the pitcher, and he hits for extra bases.
In the end, I still believe that if our pitching staff is able to maintain their team avg ERA of 4.30 and 3rd best in The NL in Quality starts we can compete for the playoffs. I just hope to see more of a sense of urgency and focus in the batters box, even though it's only April. My fear is that we get buried by June and we label 2008 as a lost season. I know this was alot of writing and it may seem like I am over-reacting for two loses, but I am only upset because our Astros continue to show little consistency and that worries me.
Astros 2008 Schedule
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