Wigginton was placed on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to April 6 due to a fractured left thumb. He’s eligible to return on April 21 The Astros called up David Newhan for Saturday.
Matsui was supposed to make his third start Friday in a scheduled four-game rehab with the Hooks, but he was scratched during pregame drills. JD said it was “back spasms”. Link
GM Ed Wade didn’t have a problem with Brandon Backe standing up for teammate J.R. Towles and not backing down from Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols during Wednesday’s confrontation in batting practice.
“I like competitiveness; I like fire,” Wade said. “You can probably take sides on both ends of it. I wasn’t crazy about the slide, but that’s part of the game. …I like when teammates stick up for one another. There’s no harm in any of it in my opinion. Here’s a guy that has enough belly to step up and say what he felt.”
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The GM on the season so far
Q: If your bobblehead doll could talk, what would it say?
Spaz: We didn’t get dressed up for nothing.
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The game was delayed a few minutes in the bottom of the sixth inning while plate umpire Joe West waited for ballpark personnel to change the rolling advertising panels behind the plate.
Cardinals second baseman Aaron Miles said he was having trouble seeing the ball against the white backdrop, which manager Tony La Russa said was turning to black when the Astros were in the field.
“That’s against the rules,” La Russa said. “They were very hard-headed about changing it. I kept thinking they’re messing with the wrong guy. You don’t mess with Joe West.”
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On pitching to The Smirking Goon
“[I was] coming off the field and he approached me,” Backe said. “I don’t know. It’s apparent that we don’t like each other. That’s OK. There’s plenty of people I don’t like in this game. It doesn’t matter. It’s baseball. It’s the way it goes. The competition between he and I just escalated and it’s OK. It’s no big deal. This is what makes it fun.”
Backe said. “I felt like he confronted me at the wrong time. I don’t think it was very professional on his part. It’s OK. Cooper was there, and he heard everything. It wasn’t going to go any farther than what it did. He had to say his piece to me, I said my piece to him and that’s it.”
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