Astros 5
Red Sox 4

WP Fields (3-1)
LP Breslow (0-1)

submitted by Mr. Happy

Attendance 30,748
Time 3:31

The Good Guys rode a 4-5 night by the Piranha, culminating in a walk-off shibby, together with two other longballs, in besting the BoSox 5-4 in the third game of a three game set, resulting in a sweep of the nine from Beantown. The Red Sox are clearly a mess right now.

Young Lance McCullers wasn’t his best on long-time rest, suffering from poor fastball command. McCullers was battling himself a bit out there too. However, he did manage to give the club five innings of six hit two run ball, which kept us in the ballgame. Despite not having good command either (55 strikes 52 balls), Wade Miley survived six frames of one run ball and left with a lead.

The BoSox were winning 2-1 at the end of six frames, but the Good Guys put up a crooked (three) number in the seventh to take a 4-2 lead, thanks in part to a solo pinch hit dong by Colby Rasmus and doubles by Marwin Gonzalez (who’s been absolutely locked in from both sides of the dish for a few weeks now) and phenom Carlos Correa. In the first inning, Marwin Gonzalez hit his seventh home run in the first frame off of Miley, batting right-handed. His double over the head of Red Sox CF Mookie Betts came from the left side off of Junichi Tazawa, who’s a tough hombre.

However, what the Good Lord giveth, He also taketh away. The normally reliable Will Harris surrendered the lead with some help from the equally reliable Luke Gregerson, one on a solo shot by Big Papi, whose bat looked a little slow to me. This knotted the game at four. After Josh Fields pitched a scoreless top of the ninth, the Good Guys took their cuts in the bottom of the ninth, trying to avoid free baseball. And avoid it they did! With one out, Jose Altuve parked one for the walkoff winner.

There was excitement in Astroland yesterday, with the acquisition of portsider Scott Kazmir. Kazmir makes his Astros debut in Kansas City tonight. Come check us out in the Game Zone, unless you’re a know-it-all sabermetric troll.

Preston Tucker slugs two homers and Collin McHugh solid through seven innings.

WP: C. McHugh (11 – 5)
LP: J. Kelly (2 – 6)
Save: L. Gregerson (20)

Submitted by Sphinx Drummond

BOX

GAMEZONE

It worked again. The recurring theme, hit homers-score runs, get nice starting starting pitching and lock down relief work. The Astros scored all of their runs off of the long ball on Wednesday, Preston Tucker started it off with a solo shot in the first inning to get things rolling and to give McHugh a lead. Evan Gattis chimed in with his own solo dinger in the fourth to build the lead to 3 to 0. In the fourth inning, with Jose Altuve on base, Tucker hit is second homerun and third RBI of the night, giving the Astros a 4 to 0 lead, which would prove to be enough for the victory.

Collin McHugh, didn’t have his best but what he had was pretty good and he was able to work out of a couple of tight jams, he did get hit around for 2 runs in the sixth, but was never in serious trouble thanks to the run support. McHugh worked seven innings allowing 7 hits, while walking 2 and striking out 4. In the eighth inning it was Pat Neshek time and he worked 2 strikeouts around 1 walk in his inning of work before giving way to Luke Gregerson who got all three of the batters he faced in the ninth out for his 20th save of the year.

Currently the Astros are 2 games behind the Burning Angels in the division and .007 percentage points behind the Evil Empire in the league standings for fourth place overall. Thursday the Astros try for a series sweep when Lance McCullers (4 -3, 2.52) takes the mound against Wade Miley (8 – 8, 4.49) in a 7:10pm CST start time.

Attendance – 31104
Game Time – 2:44

Rays 3
Astros 1

submitted by Neil T

The Astros have been losing a bunch of games lately. “That’s baseball.” Collin McHugh. “Four straight losses,” Houston Astros.

I keep a book in my office to read at lunch if I think I can afford the time, and for the last few months it’s been Roger Angell’s Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion. I have two favorite baseball writers: Bill James and Roger Angell. They’re about as different as two writers can be, but they’re both good writers, and they both approach the world of baseball as fans. And when they were writing they both liked baseball fans.

I’ve made fun of James before in my recaps, by declaring myself a statistics god and going off on absurd statistical analysis, so tonight I thought I would do an Angell recap. It would be easy enough, all I would I have to do was write about Tropicana Field as a beautiful baseball field, and pick a player to say some stuff about. I was thinking about Valbuena, both because I admire Valbuena, and because Valbuena is about as good a place as any to start talking about this team. I was going to say that Carter looked like half of the population of a cop squad car. Glad I got that in.

I’ve reached a comfortable schtick with these recaps. I think of something funny in the world at large, write about that, and then cram a bit of a recap into it. But this week at lunch I read a New Yorker essay by Angell about three Detroit Tigers fans, and it made me think of us. These were three pre-internet friends, who went to games together, who called each other to talk about baseball stuff, who wrote letters to each other, and who checked the evening papers for the box scores. Evening papers. Papers.

Truth is, I don’t have much to say about baseball. I’m not baseball smart like HH or JimR. I’m not baseball news obsessive like anyone in the BusRide. I don’t really care what ex-Astros are up to. I had planned tonight to watch the game carefully and have something profound to say. Instead I sat on the back porch and drank whiskey and smoked a cigar and listened to Blum and Ashby. Fuck it, I’m so stupid that I can’t dislike Ashby.

But you know what? I’ve put up with a lot of emotional baseball havoc over the last three years, and there’s some stuff I know: McHugh pitched a pretty good game. Rasmus hit a dinger. Valbuena got a double, and that lifted my hopes, but they were subsequently dashed. And I shared it with a pretty good group of friends.

Astros lost. Astros may lose again. I will care, but I’ll share it with a pretty good group of friends. Here’s for the rest of the season.

Vince Velasquez ties the Major League record of 5 consecutive no-decisions to start a career in 6 to 5 team win

submitted by Sphinx Drummond

WP: Gregerson (3 – 1)
LP: Herrera (1 -2)

BOX

Gamezone

Vince Velasquez started out shaky, surrendering 2 runs in the first inning and 1 one in the second, he then settled down and kept the Royals from scoring again until he was removed from the game with one out in the 7th and a 5 to 3 lead. The Astros had scored one run in the fourth and four runs in the fifth to take the two run lead. Josh Fields took over for Velasquez and quickly allowed the Royals to tie the game back up with two runs in the frame and thereby denying Velasquez a victory and awarding him with one of those MLB records for futility.

Sweeping the Royals and moving within .007 of having the best record in the league did not come without a cost as George Springer was injured on his right wrist by from a HBP in the fifth inning by Kelvin Herrera. Still no word on how much time he may miss or the results of his x-ray but A. J. Hinch is not optimistic.

The game involved the top two bullpens in the AL prior to Wednesdays game the Royals held a 2.05 ERA, while the Astros were at 2.56. The Royals still have not lost a game all year that they had lead after seven innings, they are 34 and 0, and with the lead after eight innings they are 40-0. So the Astros did well just coming back from a tie.

Carter hit his 15th homer of the season and Marwin Gonzalez hit his fifth. Jose Altuve had a three hit game and stole two bases, his batting average is now at .298.

The Astros are off Thursday as they travel to Boston where Dan Straily makes his Astros debut Friday and faces off against Justin Masterson (3-2 5.58) in a game that starts at 6:10pm Houston time.

Astros have won four games in a row and now have a 7 – 1 inter-league record.

WP: Brett Oberholtzer (2 – 1)
LP: Kyle Kendrick (2 – 9)

Gamezone BOX

submitted by Sphinx Drummond

It did not take long for the Astros to get on top. George Springer, lead off the game with a single up the middle and Carlos Correra drove him home with a two run home-run to jump out for a quick 2 – 0 lead. Springer has now hit safely in his last 10 games. Correra is still only 20 years old. Three more Astros homers followed on the night and I do believe that Brett Oberholzter has solidified his claim for a permanent spot in the rotation.

Olberholtzer (ERA 2.73) lasted 6.1 innings allowing three runs on eight hits while striking out five and walking none. It wasn’t great or dominating but it was a good performance, the kind you hope for from a fourth or fifth man in a rotation. Josh Fields finished the 7 inning for Oberholtzer while Joe Thatcher (one batter) and Pat Nechek (two batters) were perfect in the 8th inning. Chad Quall closed the game in the ninth but not before allowing a solo home-run to Carlos Gonzalez.

On the night the Astros hit four home-runs, Carlos Correra’s was his third on the year, which FWIW, puts him one ahead of Robinson Cano’s total. Preston Tucker (3), Chris Carter (12), and Jake Marisnick (5), were responsible for the other three dingers hit Wednesday. The Astros have hit multiple home runs in 26 games this season and in those 26 games, the Astros are undefeated, making it the longest winning streak in multi-homer games in franchise history. The previous record was a 22-game streak, set in 1994. Oh yeah, since it was played in a NL park I should mention, Oberholtzer received a base on balls in his one plate appearance.

The Astros remain in Denver Thursday for a day game that starts at 2:10 pm local time. Collin McHugh (6-3) – 5.08 ERA faces off against Dave Hale (2-1) – 4.56 ERA