Sure Footer, Fallas, McTaggart and Levine provide plenty of Spring Training coverage from Kissimmee, but if you want to hear about the real happenings – SnS style – the buck stops with Chuck. Chuck is a long-time SnS’er and has been an Astros Spring Training season ticket holder for the past four years. This year we’ve conned and cajoled him into periodically writing about his Spring Training observations for us here at TRWD. Enjoy!
Early in spring training you can expect to see a lot of pitchers struggling to find the strike zone with their fastballs and a lot of very sloppy infield play. This game had both of those things. In front of a very sparse crowd the Astros erased an early 5-0 deficit built largely on pitchers’ control problems and infield miscues by going crazy in a bat-around bottom of the 4th where just about everyone but Jason Castro got an extra base hit. Later, five pitchers threw an inning each of tidy, scoreless baseball (no walks issued by anyone after the Myers’ three in the first frame) after Sampson qualified for the win pitching the bottom of the fourth.
Last year the opening game at Osceola County featured Florida’s Governor and an opening day spectacle on the field led by Drayton McLane. This year there was no spectacle and no Governor and no Drayton.
The things about the opening game that stood out beyond the absence of the team owner and the very light crowd was the productive plate appearances by the pair of young players I am trying to watch closely – Manzella and Castro. Both of these guys figure to be very good defensive players. Manzella has been advertised as an Adam Everett replacement, all glove and just about no bat. Castro has hit well through the minors, but since seeing him for the first time last spring I have been very impressed with his defense. With Manzella and Castro holding down two critical defensive positions I expect the team to be very solid up the middle. Offensively, Manzella and Castro both had very credible plate appearances. Manzella, the starting shortstop, and Castro, the DH, each had a base hit and each hit the ball hard in most every plate appearance. Castro’s hit ironically was a dribbler up the first base line, but in other plate appearances he was aggressive and made solid contact. Manzella too was very aggressive and looked very confident. He has a batting stance vaguely reminiscent of Moises Alou in that he pinches his left knee in fairly dramatically. Manzella had four quality at-bats, putting the ball in play crisply each time. It’s exciting to imagine these two leading the team into its next chapter.
Anyway, Wandy started the game for the good guys and had some control issues. Most of the Astros pitchers had their difficulties with only Byrdak, Lindstrom and Loux looking good in the box score by not allowing an earned run in their appearance. Byrdak and Loux were fine. Both of these guys are ex-Tigers, by the way. Byrdak is almost certain to make the big league team, but Loux is an interesting pitcher. He throws what looks like a 3/4 split finger pitch. I happened to be able to watch him throw from behind the catcher a few days ago and his release point immediately caught my eye as well as something odd about the way his wrist is cocked prior to release. This was not every pitch, just the strange splitter that I was mentioning. I’d always thought that most splitter pitchers use more of a 12 o’clock release point so the ball dives on the hitter. Loux’s 3/4 delivery has the ball dancing around almost like a hard-thrown forkball. As I watch him more I’ll try to get a better handle on what he’s doing. But this day he turned in a nice inning with a hit and a K and no ER.
Lindstrom didn’t give up a run but neither did he make it through his allotted inning. Yes, he throws hard. But, in this game at least, that’s all he does. His fastball looked very straight and he had no other pitch that was at all effective. Of course he may have been working on something specific in the outing. Many times a pitcher early in spring training will take the mound intent on doing one or two things and completely ignoring whatever else he may ordinarily throw. Maybe this was the case today, but Lindstrom couldn’t throw a strike with anything other than his fastball, and after the first fastball the hitters were not missing it. If they weren’t hitting them they were fouling them off, a lot. Lindstrom threw six, eight, ten pitches to many if not most if not all of the batters he faced. I’ll be very interested to watch him throughout the spring, too, to see how his arsenal of pitches develops.
Bazardo arrived on the scene in time to give up three runs. Not to be outdone Polin Trinidad managed six runs, all earned, on four walks and two hits in one of the uglier outings you will see. I’m still trying to figure out how the Tigers got any hits because Trinidad was nowhere near the plate. Ever. And he recorded no outs so his ERA is currently infinity.
The fielding was terrible. There were Little League errors in the outfield (Bogusevic with two drops in RF) and infield (Shelton, another ex-Tiger, a wild throw to third from his post at first base). But these are the things that Brad Mills gets to be unhappy about. Give me another 20 years or so and maybe then I can lay claim to being a salty Spring Training attendee, but as of now I’ve seen enough of these games to know when to start paying attention to defensive miscues, and we’re nowhere close yet. Especially not when we’re talking about guys who aren’t going to be in Houston in April anyway.
As for the other pitchers there are a couple of things I’d like to mention. Arias looks different to me. As observed by homer of TZ fame who was kindly able to join me for a couple of games, Arias looks like he’s slinging the ball rather than throwing it. I’ll be watching this while I’m here and asking about it when I can. I’ve seen Gervacio twice now. He’s all over the place but somehow manages to get people out. Jose Valdez is a very tall, very lanky pitcher. I have no idea where the hell he came from but he throws a weird-ass forkball, a real forkball, not like Loux’s faux-fork, and it appears to confuse the shit out of batters. Unfortunately he seems to have only the vaguest notion of where it’s headed. But he’s an interesting guy. And finally, Fernando Abad. He gave up a couple of hits today and in so doing had the ugliest line score of any pitcher. I read somewhere that the team is giving Abad a real chance to make the squad. I can see why. He’s a stocky left hander, not too tall, but not short. Six feet? Six-two? He’s bigger than Wandy and throws harder. He goes right at guys and has an attitude out there that you’d immediately appreciate. I’ll keep watching him to try to get a better handle on what his breaking balls are all about because I think that this guy is someone to watch. I don’t necessarily think he’s a dark horse to make the team, but I do think we’ll be seeing him at some point in the future and I’d like to know what to expect.
And seeing a kid like Abad is another reason why I am always pleased when some bunch of jumped up shitheads dutifully informs the universe that the Astros have the worst farm system in baseball. You guys keep writing that, OK? Thanks.
Other than that, at the plate Bourn looks bad, Matsui looks really bad… It’s early. Everyone else looks about like you’d expect them to at this point. Pedro Feliz… Well, his defense is no joke. With Pedro and Manzella the Astros are going to have a defensive left side of the infield to remember. And he’s been productive with the bat so far. I should emphasize that so much of what you see here at this point between pitchers and hitters simply will not translate into the season because pitchers are not using all of their pitches and certainly not in the same sort of sequence that they might in the regular season. So when Hunter Pence went nutso three or four years ago it was fun but not necessarily indicative of what he might do elsewhere. Next thing you know he’s a NL All Star. Anyway, yeah, Feliz is going to prove to be a nice addition I think. Watching him in workouts I saw him to be very up, very energetic, very vocal, very fun. I’m hoping he brings the team some of the energy that Tejada injected. I don’t see him calling time out in the middle of an inning and giving pep talks on the mound, but I do think that he is a very positive, inclusive sort of player that will benefit the team beyond making Ole! grounders at third a thing of the past.
Photos from March 4 vs. Nationals and March 5 at Joker Marchant
