I typically start these recaps well before the game is over, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I got sucked into making gifs all night because there were quit a few good moments tonight that warranted it. None of which involve J.A. Happ who for the only the third time this season allowed less than three runs.
I think we're beginning to see why the Astros paid Happ 2.3 million to stick around, to see what he can do. He's never going to be the ace of the staff, but he just might make a decent back-end of the rotation starter who can every once and a while pitch a game like this. Overall Happ went six innings, allowing one run on five hits and two walks, while striking out six. The one run came via an Alfonso Soriano homerun.
Now for the rest of the recap we'll use the gifs I've created to recreate this wonderful game after the jump.
For a full transcript of the chat check out Alyson Footer's blog.
This is the third or fourth chat Jeff Luhnow has done with fans, and while there's never anything news breaking it's a great initiative by Luhnow and this new front office to be more interactive with the fan base. Drayton McLane was like this, but in a more traditional way, so it's not like the initiative has never been there it's just been updated to the current era of social media.
1) jermster Q: JD Martinez and Brian Bogusevic are struggling at the plate. At what point do you see sending a player down to the minor to work things out?
Jeff Luhnow's response:
That’s a tough question to answer. I believe both of them can work through any issues and turn the corner without being sent down. Let’s hope I’m right. If our team is suffering significantly due to any player, we will take steps to mitigate that, but one of the things I’ve enjoyed about this team is the fact that when one guy struggles, others tend to step up. I hope that continues.
This is something that has begun cropping up more and more. What to do with the struggling Brian Bogusevic and J.D. Martinez? Luhnow essentially responds with the same thing we've been preaching for the past several weeks now, patience. This team, despite players struggling, is still exceeding expectations and playing well despite Bogusevic and Martinez struggles.
Yes, Fernando Martinez, Justin Ruggiano, Scott Moore, Mike Hessman, Brad Snyder, Brian Bixler, Landon Powell and Jimmy Paredes are all playing well, but that doesn't mean you make a move for the sake of making a move. There's still 75% left to go and as the Player Performance Rankings have shown players can jump from the bottom of the team in hitting to the top in just one week. Seeing how these players respond to to their own struggles is an important in the evaluation process.
There are also other things to consider such as 40 man roster spots, options or the lack there of, handness, etc. Luhnow says as much in response to another question later in the chat. It's not as simple as plug this guy in for this guy. Brian Bogusevic even with his struggles has a very good chance of being claimed by another team as a reserve outfielder, because he's young, he's inexpensive and he's shown some potential. And it's not even a guarantee that the player that gets called up has success that the other player did not.
The Astros are in the evaluation phase of the rebuilding process and I'm happy to see Luhnow taking a patient approach with these players and as he pointed out when he ended the chat:
Bogie with a walk. For all JD and Bogie’s struggles, they both get on base. CJ up with ducks on the pond.
Allow me to imitate the sounds of the three homeruns hit by the Astros. If you are under 54 inches, have serious heart conditions, or are unhealthy, please do not ride roller coasters or read what I have to say immediately following this paragraph. If you are a daredevil, please go on ahead to §1.00 of this game recaps. If not, please head on down to the more conservative recap parts in §2.00.
§1.00 HOMERUN SOUND BITES
Jason Castro. Lop! Pheewwww... 3-run homer! Chris Johnson. Smack!!! Shhhhhhh... Plop! 3-run absolute BOMB to the Budweiser patio in center field! Jed Lowrie. Beebedy, boobidy, bop. His 7th homerun this year! See §3.00 for the animated .gifs that will tickle your fancies, indeed.
§2.00 CONSERVATIVE & POSITIVE GAME RECAP
Well this was a really good game, with perhaps except the 9th inning when the Astros gave up 4 runs that really shouldn't have scored. How did Bud Norris do? Well, he was facing the Cubs, so the answer to this question is probably "really well". And of course, Bud Norris did really well, pitching 7 shut-out innings with 8 strikeouts, 3 walks, and 5 hits with only one of them being a double. His slider was really working tonight as he pushes his season ERA down to 3.14, with only have given up 1 run in his past 26 innings pitched in all of the month of May. 1 walk to Tony Campana ended up being turned into 2 stolen bases. That Tony Campana is really fast, probably faster than Michael Bourn as he stole those 2 bags in the first inning. But Studly Budlie pitched shutout ball untill he had to leave the game with a high pitch count. If he can ever get another tertiary pitch like his change to improve or maybe a curveball, he could blossom like a cactus in the hot blistering desert. Sharp, pointy, and oh so tempting is the name of the game for ace starting pitchers.
How about that Jason Castro, hitting his 3rd major league homer against the Cubs, first of the year and his second 3-run homer (both came off of Cubs pitching). It's really nice when some offense can be had via the catching position and we got it in a big way with that homer. How many more homers could Castro hit this year? I don't really know, but I will know when the season is over.
Chris Johnson has finally hit a homerun that I actually got to see live, his 5th of the year. He hasn't been too shabby as our 3rd baseman this year, performing well on both offense and defense, even amid all the strikeouts. But the 3-run homer he hit today was just testament to the strength that CJ has. He hit that one all the way to the Budweiser patio in CF. All Campana could do was run and look upward in disbelief as the ball soared over his head.
Finally, the last homer came via a Jed Lowrie solo-shot to RF. Lowrie has shown a lot of moxie batting from the left side of the plate. Now that he's injury free, he's performing quite well, at a level he probably couldn't show to the Red Sox since he was injured. This was a really smart trade by GM Jeff Luhnow. Boston had an injured player they were growing impatient with. Because he was injured, his true talent level wasn't showing through and was thus being undervalued. Because the injuries weren't related, Jeff Luhnow saw that Lowrie was probably going to have an injury-free 2012. This is pretty much true, for the most part and Luhnow ended up getting the better part of the deal. Thank you, Jeff Luhnow. Who knows, he might be the starting SS in the MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City later this year. Wouldn't that be something?
§2.50 NEGATIVE PORTION OF GAME RECAP
The Astros had a swell game up until the top of the 9th inning. Mr. Everything, Enerio del Rosario came out after pitching a scoreless 8th inning. So much for calling up an extra pitcher to give some guys a day off as Fernando Abad came in the game after EDR gave up a run. After Abad gave up a hit that scored an inherited runner, Wilton Lopez came into a game he shouldn't have with a 6-run lead. Lopez allowed 2 inherited runners to score as a ball went to Travis Buck in RF, who was blinded by the lights and couldn't immediately locate the ball. Finally, Lopez ended the madness before it got even further out of hand and the Astros took an 8-4 victory.
According to Brian McTaggart the Astros made the somewhat surprising move of signing Armando Galarraga to a Minor League contract and look to plug him at Oklahoma City where relievers have been making spot starts.
Galarraga is probably most well known for the perfect game that wasn't. That's the one that Jim Joyce blew the call on with two outs in the ninth, robbing Galarraga of an appearance with the gatekeeper of the perfect club, Kate Upton. Think about it, what better way to shoot the commercial than Galarraga and Verlander Detroit teammates walking in and Galarraga saying something along the lines of "catch you later Justin" and then walking in while Verlander either gets tossed out or is standing outside looking in while it starts to rain.
Unfortunately, history was rewritten with Joyce's call and after being traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks, granted free agency, signed by the Baltimore Orioles, released at the start of the season, he now finds himself with an audition for a spot in the suddenly starter starved Redhawks rotation. The Redhawks have a couple open spots due to the Kyle Weiland injury and Henry Sosa taking his arm to Korea.
Galarraga has yet to pitch this season and will start warm ups in Kissimmee before he's assigned to Oklahoma City.
What can he offer? Minor League depth. Maybe Burt Hooton can work his magic. At this point though there are younger better options that can fill in for the Major League club. What the Astros really need right now is someone that can eat innings in OKC and that's what this signing looks like.
Right-handed pitcher Enerio Del Rosario has been called up to replace Jordan Lyles on the roster, according to Alyson Footer of MLB.com:
Del Rosario called up to replace Lyles on roster.
— Alyson Footer (@alysonfooter) May 21, 2012
Del Rosario, 26, has 65 professional innings under his belt and sports a 4.57 ERA between his time with the Cincinatti Reds and the Astros. He has seen just two innings of work in the pros this season, giving up one walk, two hits, and one earned run while striking out one. Del Rosario is just as likely to walk a batter as strike him out and has an unlikely 1-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio for his career.
Lyles, 21, started fifteen games for the Astros in 2011, going 94 innings at a 5.36 ERA clip. He was optioned to Oklahoma City to start the 2012 season, but was recalled back to Houston on April 29 to make a start for Kyle Weiland while he was on the DL. Lyles has seen three starts and seventeen innings in 2012 while earning a 5.29 ERA on the season.
Lyles was optioned back to Oklahoma City yesterday.
The Astros have optioned Jordan Lyles after a poor start in which he gave up 6 earned runs in 5 innings pitched. This is no surprise as the Astros won't need another starter until May 28, where the Astros have a double header in Colorado.
What makes this move interesting though is that it isn't clear who will be called up to take Jordan Lyles' roster spot. Typically, the Astros would call up another pitcher to put in the bullpen, such as Fernando Abad, but he's already on the major league roster, and the Astros don't really have that many attractive bullpen options at OKC. The other thing that makes this interesting is that on the 28th, the Astros are allowed to have a 26-man active roster because it is a "unique double-header", meaning that nobody has to be optioned to make room for a starting pitcher on the 28th. And lastly, if this were an easy move to make, the move would have already been announced after the game last night.
Among the positions that the Astros may be looking to fill, the Astros bullpen has been okay, but the offense lately has been less than desirable overall, especially in the outfield. J.D. Martinez has been slumping and Jordan Schafer is day-to-day with an injury to his ankle. Calling up an outfielder would make sense, especially considering the production out of our current outfielders lately. Let's take a look at the chart after the jump...
Colby Lewis came, he saw and he conquered.
The Rangers pitcher dominated Houston for eight innings before Jed Lowrie finally touched him up in the bottom of the ninth. He struck out six, only gave up four hits and one walk (with one of those hits coming in the ninth with a 6-0 lead).
Oh, and he added two stupid hits and two RBIs. It's the first time Houston has ever given up two hits to an AL pitcher. That's how good Colby Lewis was on Sunday. He broke down records like they were nothing.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Jordan Lyles sounded almost bitterly disappointed with himself after the game. He just couldn't let go of that first inning and didn't take any solace in him pitching reasonably well over the rest of the game, until leaving after the fifth. Guy wants to win, but didn't do a great job of it then.
Ugh.
Houston lost the two games in this series by a combined score of 10-2. It's the first times since that one game in Cincinnati that I've felt Houston was just outclassed. It's not a good feeling and I'm not fond of it. Hopefully they can come out the next three games and put a hurt on the scuffling Cubs to make up for it.
For now, though...Ugh.
I just wrote a pretty lengthy story for my newspaper about all those statements, including the home runs, the pitching and the crazy, tackling rundown by Brett Myers to end things. I thought about just re-printing that here, but I'll touch on something else quickly. (P.S. Myers and Snyder both joked that he basically tackled Andrus. Which is exactly what looked like happened.)
Namely, the atmosphere. This game was night-and-day different from Friday night. Fans were into it. They were shouting over the Rangers' fans chants with "Let's Go Astros." They were standing, cheering, going crazy for Brandon Lyon (who didn't suck!) and Brett Myers.
It was very, very different from one day to the next. Were there Rangers fans throughout the ballpark? Yes. Would it have been a sellout without those fans? No. That doesn't take away from what was a very cool gameday feel.
Afterwards, Brad Mills, Brett Myers and Chris Snyder all compared the park to October baseball. Does that mean this rivalry has arrived?
I'm not sure, but I tell you it felt much, much different than any Astros game in a long time. This team is different.
This team is young, they come back, they get two-out hits (I'm looking at you, Escorpion and J.D.) when no one is on base. They get gutsy pitching performances from starters, who set career highs for strikeouts and a season-high for pitches thrown.
In short, this Astros team may be more for real than we anticipated. I don't know if they're good enough to get to .500 or contend for that second wild card spot, but I was certainly checking the standings to see how far out they were. I did not do that once last season. Or the season before that.
More importantly, give credit to Jeff Luhnow for this game. How many of his guys littered this roster? Chris Snyder came up big, Travis Buck had a huge pinch hit, Justin Maxwell played out of his mind. Heck, you could even make a case that Lucas Harrell in the rotation was his idea (even if he didn't sign him). Myers to the bullpen sure was.
Take a bow after this one, Jeff Luhnow. Houston wouldn't have beaten Dallas tonight without you.
Showing 1 - 8 of 1,928 Older
