Astros 4 Pirates 1
Keuchel (W) 3-7; Correia (L) 11-10; Lopez (S) 7
by Mr. (Very) Happy
Okay, I’ll start with a correction: My recap of Thursday’s game contained some wrong information about Bud Norris, as I picked up the wrong splits, which made him worse than he actually has been on the road. His road record is 2-12 7.41. No one caught that mistake, which makes me wonder whether anyone reads this crap. But I digress.
Everyone knows how Mr. Happy feels about soft-tossing lefties: they have to be almost perfect in their command, or it gets ugly in a hurry. Tonight, young Dallas Keuchel was very good, tossing seven innings of one run baseball, striking out five while walking only one. Those are huge stats for him on both scores, as Keuchel has this annoying tendency to nibble, which usually puts him behind in the count.
The ballgame was knotted at 1 in the bottom of the seventh frame, but Jason Castro picked an exceptionally good time to launch his third home run of the season, a three run shot, to give the Astros a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Hector Ambriz and Wilton Lopez finished out the win, earning a hold and save, respectively.
I don’t know if anyone is really paying attention to this, but the Astros are 10-10 in September, and many of those games have been against either playoff bound teams or clubs that were in the mix for a wildcard berth. In other words, the September wins haven’t been cheap wins. Since taking over for Millsie, who was 39-82, Tony D is 11-20, which is a little better than Millsie did.
Is it enough for him to secure the job full-time next season? I still don’t think so, which will suit me just fine. However, I don’t think that the manager is going to make a significant difference next season with the ballclub. If Tony D somehow cajoles this rag-tag bunch to play .500 baseball for the entire month, the managerial selection could get interesting. I’m not betting on Tony D going .500 during September, because you can’t make chicken out of chicken shit. Read that, you denizens!!!