Charismatic Kuechel and Carter power Astros past Snakes 5-1
WP: Keuchel (8-3)
LP: McCarthy (1-9)
contributed by Sphinx Drummond
Wednesday night the Astros continued their attack on the MLB. Like a sweaty fevered Pentecostal tent preacher on a hot summer night, the Astros charmed the shit out of the Diamondbacks. The serpentine bastards had no answer for the spell that Keuchel threw upon them. And the bats weren’t afraid to lay a bit of wood to the reptilian creeps.
George Springer got the Astros on the board in the bottom of the first with a single. He moved to second on a Singleton walk and scored on a single by Castro. The Astros made it 2 to 0 in the third following singles by Villar and Springer, a wild pitch by McCarthy, and a run scoring ground out by Singleton. The Diamondbacks got a run back in the 4th after an Aaron hill solo HR, alas that would be all their scoring for the night.
Chris Carter hit his first HR of the night, his 11th, in the bottom of the 4th inning and led off the bottom of the 7th with his second solo shot of the evening, number 12. The Astros tacked on one more run in the 7th when Alex Presley singled, advanced to second on a walk to Marwin Gonzalez, moved to third on a single by Villar, and scored on Springer’s sacrifice fly to CF.
Keuchel pitched 8 solid innings allowing 4 hits while walking 1 and striking out 5. Chad Qualls pitched a scoreless ninth in relief in a non-save situation. Qualls has lowered his ERA to a stellar 1.99.
Dallas, from Oklahoma, keeps the ball down. His ERA is 2.38 and is ninth best in the Big Leagues. He has 8 wins and is allowing opponents a lowly .226 batting average against. He keeps the ball low in the zone. He has two complete games, one a shut out. He has cranked out seven quality starts in a row. He has induced 15 double plays, he leads MLB in ground ball outs. He has only walked 18 batters. He keeps the ball down. His WHIP is cracking at 0.99. He doesn’t strike out a ton of batters but he does have 75 in 90.2 innings. He’s hit two batters and you just know they were asking for it.
Carter from California, has no problem striking out, 67 times in 191 at bats. That ties him among Astros with George Springer, he is also tied with Springer for the team HR lead with 12. He also got his average back to .200. Now he can set a goal to get it to .210. And from there who knows, maybe .230.
Thursday the Astros and D-backs square off one more time with Scott Feldman going against Wade Miley. They are supposed to start the game at 7:10pm CST.
Attendance – 24319
Game Time – 2:22
Temperature – 73