Royals 5 Astros 1
Contributed by Mr. Happy
Mrs. Happy and I traipsed on down to Fifth Third Field for a Toledo Mudhens game tonight for some live baseball, which is why I was absent from the Game Zone. A good time was had by all. J.D. Martinez, who plays for the Mudhens, has been hitting pretty well thus far but tonight he looked a lot like the J.D. Martinez I knew as an Astro, striking out on a full count heater up in his eyes that was ball four. Even though I was wearing Astros regalia, I couldn’t bring myself to heckle him. Retreads like Justin Sellers, Bryan LaHair and Nyjer Morgan were on the field for the Columbus Clippers, which is Cleveland’s AAA farm team.
The Astros struck out 13 times while only garnering five knocks en route to a brooming by Kansas City 5-1 to drop to 5-11. James Shields twirled eight masterful and efficient (107 pitches, 64 for strikes) frames of 12 strike out four hit ball, surrendering but one run on a sacrifice fly by Alex Presley. No Astro had more than one hit to drop the team’s BA to a putrid .188. Scott Feldman looked a lot more like Scott Feldman tonight, who was a 53-56 4.53 career pitcher coming into tonight’s action in dropping his record to 2-1.
The Royals had all of the runs that they would need after two innings. They touched Feldman for nine hits and five runs, four of which were earned. If there were some silver linings to tonight’s game, they included that George Springer got his second big league hit and that Anthony Bass needed only 29 pitches to toss three scoreless frames.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Good Guys as they travel to the Left Coast to wrestle with the Oakland A’s and then the Seattle Mariners. You can read my series preview of the A’s series. Come visit us in the Game Zone.