It’s easy to be angry at the Houston Astros now. But for a few notable exceptions, like Carlos Lee, the Astros are performing as expected.
They were swept by the Philadelphia Phillies this weekend, just as they were swept by the San Francisco Giants to open the season. They were destroyed by good pitching, shoddy defense, an inability to hit with men on base, when they could actually get men on base, but most of all, their lack of overall talent just bit them again.
The Astros are 0-6 for the season, the only team yet to win a game this season, and it’s not looking like they’re going to win a game anytime soon.
The Astros lost 8-0 on Friday in a game that wasn’t as close as that final score indicates. Bud Norris failed to get through the third inning, and the hitters failed to do anything of note against J.A. Happ. The Astros actually, for a few innings, held a lead on Saturday night, but big money off-season acquisitions Brandon Lyon and Matt Lindstrom doomed the team to the 9-6 defeat — Lyon pitching the seventh on Saturday night gave up 3 runs, including a monster three-run homer by Ryan Howard that put the Phillies back in the lead, and Lindstrom gave up two in the ninth.
Roy Oswalt gave up a lead-off homer to Jimmy Rollins yesterday
afternoon, and there was just no way, with Roy Halladay pitching, that
the Astros were going to win that game, which they didn’t, losing 2-1 as
Halladay earned his 150th career win while pitching his 50th career
complete game.
There aren’t many positives from the weekend. The retro uniforms on
Saturday night looked great, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who
wishes the Astros would switch to those classic-looking uniforms from
now on instead of these ugly pinstriped pajama-looking things they’ve
been wearing since 2000.
Another positive was Jeff Bagwell, who joined
the TV broadcast crew on Saturday night and provided some excellent
analysis. Oh, and Hunter Pence not only got an extra-base hit, he hit a
homer on Saturday.
But the negatives are numerous. Carlos Lee, who is inexplicably the
only Astro to start every game of this 0-6 nightmare season, so far, is
3-for-23 on the season, with no RBI, seven strikeouts, a batting average
under .150, and an OBP under .200. Yet when manager Brad Mills
attempted to shake up the lineup this weekend, his worst outfielder was
the guy who continued to play while Michael Bourn on Saturday, and
Hunter Pence on Sunday, got benched.
The justifications for the continued playing of Lee, and the money he
makes, are that he hits homers and gets a lot of RBI, and that, despite
his lack of speed and hustle, he has learned how to play the Crawford
Boxes. Yet his awful outfield play allowed Ryan Howard, not the
speediest of players, to get a triple on a ball hit off of the leftfield
scoreboard on Saturday night, and which then bounced off of Lee’s
shoulder.
And seeing as how Lee’s nowhere near close to hitting his
weight, his continuing to play while (somewhat) better players like Bourn
and Pence have to sit is just puzzling.
But the ugliest thing of all, even more ugly than Lee’s play, is
that the team has drawn only five walks for the entire season — Jeff
Keppinger has three of the five.
Bagwell explained on Saturday that
it’s difficult for a batter to take pitches and draw a walk when he’s
pressing, and that these batters are pressing. But the Astros have
never been known as a team that takes walks, even when they’re not
pressing, so while I agree with Bagwell’s statement in general, it just
doesn’t apply to this team.
The Astros are now on their way to St. Louis where they take on the
Cardinals for three games. The good news is that the Astros won’t have
to face Chris Carpenter this series. The bad news is that they will
have to face Adam Wainwright, Brad Penny, and Kyle Lohse. So the
chances of the team winning game number one anytime soon are looking
slight. Very slight.
Then after that, they head to Chicago to face the
Cubs for three. It’s possible, though there’s only a slight chance, that the Astros could
return home next week with an 0-12 record.
SOME MISCELLANEOUS NOTES:
The 0-6 start is the worst start for the Astros since 1983, when they
opened the season at 0-9. They finished that season 85-77. I don’t see
that happening for this Astros team….The Astros have also been
outscored 37-13 this season….The Astros only run scored yesterday was
an unearned run.
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2010.
