Astros 7, Rays 3

W: Cosart (6-5)
L: Archer (3-4)

Seven out of their last ten. 21-12 over the last month or so. Who are these guys?

Down 1-0 early on Evan Longoria’s RBI single in the first, the Good Guys came roaring back against a faltering Chris Archer in the third. They rang up five tallies, the big blow coming on Matt Dominguez’ three-run double.

Fowler drove in two with a double in the fourth and Longoria answered in the fifth with a two-run homer, but that was it the rest of the way. Cosart went seven and scattered nine hits, while Sipp, Fields and Zeid closed it out. Fields experienced forearm tightness during his appearance and went to the 15-day DL after the game.

Astros 1
Rays 6

contributed by NeilT

I think someone forgot to tell the Rays this season that they were supposed to be an enviously well-oiled machine competing in the AL East, though last night I was envious. I think someone forgot to tell the Red Sox, too, and the Yankees, but they’re not the subject of this recap.

But the Rays! They are supposed to be the very model of a modern major-general, and instead they are casting back to Astro’s very recent past. It’s a tangled line, a fouled hook, a snagged fly, but I think it’s all about the name change. Here you have a perfectly good name, the Devil Rays, named after a perfectly interesting fish. There are a lot of fish names in sports. There’s the Marlins, and the Dolphins. There’s the Texas City Stingarees and the Port Isabel Tarpons. There are Barracudas, Tunas, and Walleyes. And of course there are Hooks. So what do the Rays do? They scrap a perfectly good fish name to name themselves after Florida Man.

So the Florida Men are playing Astrolinean baseball, with a 25-42 record. Granted, they have a lot of players on the DL, but what do you expect when everyone on your team lives in Florida and is named Ray? Just look at some of these headlines:

Florida man in tiny white shorts and belly shirt gets DUI after crashing into three cars.

Florida man run over by van after dog pushes accelerator.

Hallucinating Florida man seeing imaginary aliens walks into store with large knives and asks not to be eaten

Florida man accused of faking black mamba snake bite.

Police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at Wal-Mart.

Those are all from a single NPR broadcast, but they’re small fish for Florida Man. If the Rays wanted to stay off the DL, they wouldn’t have picked such a Florida Man name. There are plenty of other names to build a team around. They could have been the Reubens, or the Rons. They could have been the Sphinxes or the Neils. For Gods sake, they could have been the Happys.

Instead they’re the Florida Men, with Tim Ray Beckham, Brandon Ray Guyer, Jeremy Ray Hellickson, Matt Ray Moore, and Will Ray Myers all out for the season or on the DL. Alex Ray Cobb, who isn’t long off the DL, pitched for the Rays and beat the ‘Stros. But still, it’s Alex Ray Cobb, pitching for a team of guys named Ray.

The Rays provided lots of traffic for McWho. Jimmy Ray Loney reached at the top of the second on a Villar fielding error, then Benny Ray Zobrist doubled. Both Benny Ray and Jimmy Ray scored on a Matt Ray Joyce double. Kevin Ray Kiermaier tripled in the third, but was stranded. McWho walked David Ray DeJesus and Matt Ray Joyce in the fourth, and got his first coach’s visit to the mound. Desmond Ray Jennings led off the fifth with a double and Jimmy Ray Loney walked. Benny Ray Zobrist drove them both in on the second triple of the game.

Zeid pitched the sixth and seventh with only one walk to Matt Ray Joyce. Downs gave up a single to Benny Ray Zobrist in the 8th. Kyle Farnsworth gave up the final two runs in the ninth, with singles from Ryan Ray Hanigan, Desmond Ray Jennings, Kevin Ray Kiermaier, and Evan Ray Longoria.

The only Astros score came from a Singleton homer in the fourth off of Matt Ray Joyce, who looked strong. Brad Ray Boxberger replaced Cobb in the seventh, Brad Ray Boxberger pitched the eighth, Joel Ray Peralta the eighth, and Kirby Ray Yates and Jake McGee pitched the ninth. At least they went through a bunch of the bullpen.

Here’s maybe the strangest headline of the lot: Florida Man Beats Astros with Quality Pitching.

Astros 5 Snakes 4 (10)

contributed by Mr. Happy

The Good Guys knotted their 2014 free baseball record at three at the expense of the Snakes 5-4 before a crowd of 33,457 at MMPUS last night, bringing their record to 31-37. Look out .500!!! We had to resort to free baseball because of a Qualls blown save, his second in ten chances. However, Qualls and the Astros were redeemed by a clutch Chris Carter long ball in the tenth frame, his 13th of the season. Earlier in the game, young Jon Singleton mashed his third home run to put the Astros in an early 2-1 lead. The blown save robbed Scott Feldman of a win, although he pitched a good game, surrendering but four hits and no walks while striking out six in 6.1 frames. The Astros put up 11 hits and were led by Dexter Fowler and Carlos Corporan, who each had three knocks. The only downer to this game is that the Astros were again woefully deficient with ducks on the pond, going 0-6 w/RISP.

Last night, I took in an Indianapolis Indians/Durham Bulls game here in Indy. I got to see retread Wilson Betemit strike out swinging twice at pitches that weren’t in the zone. He looked like the same ole Betemit to me. It was a lovely night for baseball. And each person in my row won a free Chick-fil-A grilled chicken sandwich. Woo hoo!!!

Charismatic Kuechel and Carter power Astros past Snakes 5-1

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

Astros 4, D-backs 3
W: Cosart, L: Collmenter, S: Qualls

recap
gamezone

Boy howdy, I’m glad Porter was not a manger of the NL Astros. I don’t know if I could have handled all the moves he would have made during a season. Like what he did last night. I understand not wanting to lose the opportunity to have Sipp pitch to others in the inning but it was a risky that move that almost cost the game. Marwin Gonzales ended up in the outfield and did not make a good read on a ball hit to him, having him in the outfield was not something I would necessarily want on a regular basis.

And who knew National League games could last so damn long. Seriously, this game took 3 hours and 12 minutes, but it sure as hell felt a lot longer. I hate the western part of the country being behind us in time. I get tired earlier now that I’m older.

Cosart was pitching a pretty good game, but then hit a wall, started thinking, worrying or something and lost it towards the end of his outing. Ultimately, he was charged with 3 runs in 6 innings, but something changed out there for him. He has been pitching better since that one April start that was horrid, but he still has some work to do. Springer didn’t play because his knee hurt. Singleton should have had a RBI but there was so poor base running occurring in front of him.

Regardless the Astros won, which is always a good thing.

If you want to know about Tuesday’s game, check out M Raup’s Series Preview.

Astros 14, Twins 5

Submitted by Reuben

You wouldn’t know it by looking at the final score, but this game was rather tense for a while there. In fact, around the 5th inning it was starting to smell like one of those games that they would blow late, giving them cause to regret the chances they had earlier on to break it open.

Collin McHugh, after a fine start to his day, had mysteriously lost the ability to control his pitches and been removed from the game. Josh Fields arrived on the scene and accidentally poured gasoline, instead of water, on the problem. At that point the Astros 5-0 lead had nearly evaporated, the score was 5-3 and the tying runs were on base with only one out. And then, suddenly, Fields buckled down, got his changeup working, and retired the next two hitters. He cruised around a harmless single in the 6th, striking out the side. And then POW! Like a rare non-telegraphed punch from the Adam West Batman show, Chris Carter woke everyone from their sun-baked stupor in the top of the 7th with an effortless swing that produced a monster opposite-field Grand Slam. I mean, sure, Carter hits home runs, but essentially this one came from out of nowhere – and just like that, it was 9-3. Time to sit back and relax.

Well, almost. Kyle Farnsworth tried to make it interesting, letting the Minnesotans get back within 4 runs. But Springer went deep in the 8th, and in the 9th, Jon Singleton put it absolutely-definitely-for-sure out of reach with his own Grand Slam – this one a rather monstrous shot as well. It was the first time the Astros had hit two Grannies in the same game since Menke and Wynn did it against the Miracle Mets on July 30, 1969.

Of note:

-Darin Downs earned his first win as an Astro (check out that 1.32 ERA, yo)
-the Astros blew past their previous season-high in runs scored (whatever it was, this was more)
-Altuve hit safely for the 28th time in 30 games, and added two more SB’s to his league-leading total.
-Jonathan Villar had his first 3-hit game since…tee-ball, it felt like.
-Grossman reached base 4 times.
-the Twins hit 3 different Astro batters with pitches. I doubt any were intentional.

I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between Singleton’s Grand Slam swing and Carter’s. Everyone knows that George Springer swings the bat as absolutely hard as any human being has ever swung a bat, every single time, but Singleton swings just as hard when he sees a fat pitch. I mean, it’s a long (but quick), sweeping, kinda wild swing, and he almost goes down on a knee – maybe like Reggie Jackson, if Reggie had really long arms. Carter, on the other hand, has this very quiet, almost soft-looking swing – it looks very effortless, but when he connects, the ball just jumps off his bat. A pity he doesn’t connect more often.

Futility Watch: The Astros can currently claim to be better than the Dbacks, Cubs, Phillies, and Rays, and only ½ game worse than the streaky-ass Red Sox, Padres, and Mets. They’re as close to the Yankees as they are to last place, although, granted, the Yankees aren’t exactly the benchmark they used to be.