Padres at Astros, 4/21/2008
Astros 10, Padres 3
W: Oswalt (2-3) L: Germano (0-2)
HR: Berkman (5), Tejada (4), Edmonds (1), Gonzalez (3)
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Speed, pitching, defense, and big boppers in the middle. Look no further than the first inning:
Bourn draws another walk, steals second. Kaz bunts him to third and ends up reaching with a single. Tejada drills a single to Anaheim Jimmy, 1-0. Berkman promptly clears the bases with a bomb to RCF, and all the sudden, Roy is sitting on a 4-0 lead.
All the sudden, Roy can now “pitch to contact” the way he wants to; oh, and by the way, having his curve back is no small part of the equation. He was efficient (96 pitches in 7 innings) and set up the curve-to-high heat combo quite nicely on a couple of occasions.
As for the defensive front – PEnce made a nice running catch in RF, and Blum made a barehand play that Milo described as a “5 on the Richter scale”. Given that I’m not aware of any weight issues for Blum, I’m guessing that Milo was just too disctracted by his breakdown of the Boston sport scene, vis a vis Yvette’s employment with the Celtics, to recognize what he was saying.
In other game news, Pence is trying to go the other way, which is good, but is still swinging at pitches over his head, which is not. Ausmus broke up about 3 different great jumps by Pence when fouling off unhittable pitches. And Villarreal worked an honest-to-god scoreless inning for only the third time in his 10 appearances this year.
Backe tackles Peavy (possibly literally, it is Brandon after all) tonight.
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