Pirates at Astros, 7/21/2008
Pirates 9, Astros 3
W: Yates (4-2) L: Valverde (4-3)
Box score
Who gave Footer the night off?
It was destined to be a strange night from the beginning, as Coop the Mad Scientist put a prototypical #2 hitter in the leadoff spot, and a player with no future but as a leadoff hitter in the #2 spot.
Lineup dyslexia:
Jose Valverde entered the game with a 3.80 ERA. He exited 1/3 of an inning later with a 4.86 ERA. What happened? He had nothing on this night. Everything was catching the plate, and Bay and LaRoche combined to see how much of the LF facade they could chip off. Byrdak tried to stop the bleeding at 4 ER, but allowed a Pence-assisted inside-the-park job to Freddy Sanchez to close the book on Ponche at 1/3 IP, 6 ER.
On this night, Valverde:
As for the offense… 9 runs in 4 games since the ASB. The offense is now 12th in the NL in runs scored, and are only 1 ahead of the Dodgers for 13th. In other words, only SF, WAS, and SD have worse offenses.
To the offseason plan of simply outscoring your opponents…
One last note… this 9-inning affair took 3 hours, 42 minutes. It was not simply a crappy game, but it was an interminable crappy game. Let all records of it be destroyed.