Pirates at Astros, 4/24/2010
Astros 5, Pirates 2
W W. Rodriquez (1-2) L Jakubauskas (0-1)
S Lindstrom (6)
Game Wrapup: Astros.com
It’s a long season… seriously!
It’s taken three weeks of baseball, but the 2010 Houston Astros have shown the makings of a team ready to compete in the National League Central. To celebrate that fact, tonight they jumped out of the cellar in the NLC and into a tie for fourth, with only 3.5 games out of first place a reality for them. The Astros beat up on the Pittsburgh Pirates tonight to the tune of 5-2 as Wandy Rodriquez won his first game of the season. The little lefty coming off a break out season last year, showed the flashes of Minute Maid Wandy.
Never really looking like he was in too much trouble, Rodriquez logged a 7.1 inning, 5 hit, 2 run night. Yet another quality outing by an Astros starter and if this keeps up, the upward climb out of the bottom feeder area of the NL Central can and will continue. But just like it was too early to write off the 2010 season, it’s waaaay too early to print playoff tickets too. Then again, if Puma says it’s a reality, well then, who is to argue with the man? Probably a whole lot of roller coaster loving fans I’m sure. Bear in mind though, Houston is hit upon a formula now that is conducive towards getting themselves into good season-long competitiveness: Pitching and defense with just enough offense.
DUCK!!! (part 2)
It’s hard to call the offensive play of the night a line drive that hit an opposing pitcher in the head, but in this case, there are many ramifications to that occurrence. In the first inning, Puma batting cleanup (because Carlos Lee got a day off to think about other things for a while) drilled a solid line drive back up the middle. It unfortunately found the back of the head of young Pittsburgh hurler Jakubauskas. Down went the pitcher in a very scary moment that everyone hates to see in baseball. For his part, Jakubauskas tried to right himself in a reasonable fashion before he was taken by ambulance to Methodist Hospital where early reports are that he’s going to be okay. *Phew*, God Bless young man.
The significance of the play is that the Pirates were forced to use a reliever so early on after having to use up arms in their previous series with the Brew Crew. FoF Pence promptly greeted the reliever with a ringing double to center LF and that was the beginning of the end of the night for the Pirates. Later in the game, Happy Pete hit his first shibby of the season, a two run shot to pretty much ice the game. For the ninth inning, the Pirates decided to make one last run at winning the game as they loaded the bases against Lindstrom The Strong. Puma came in and promptly reminded Matty that there were two outs and that he still had a 97mph four seamer he could use to close this thing. He did, throwing a nasty riser to Cedeno and getting the last out on a fly ball to right field and sealing Houston third straight series win.
Saturday Night, that can only mean one thing: BAGWELL!
In case you’re unaware of this, Jeff Bagwell has committed to being in the television broadcast booth with Brownie and JD every Saturday home game. My own intuition tells me this must of come out of the off-season caravan trips with Baggs and JD sitting on the bus and shooting the breeze. Someone must of mentioned how great this sort of running dialogue could be if they did it on air. Genius whoever thought of it, a great move. Example:
Brownie: “What do you think of Jeff Keppinger?”
Bagwell: “I like him. He grows on you.”
Deshaies: “Let’s rename him ‘Fungus.'”
and
Brownie: “… he actually compares better than Albert Pujols at this stage of his career…”
Bagwell: “whoa, whoa, whoa Brownie… wait a minute, don’t ever compare the best player on the planet to anyone again.”
Brownie: “… hehe, okay.”
Gamezone: A great way to catch up with the action, along with great Astro Fan commentary
stros-ray’s Series Preview: The genius that is Stros-ray