Astros 4, Pirates 1

W – Michael William Hampton (5-5, 4.16)

L – Virgil Matthew Vasquez (1-2, 4.50)

SV – Jose Rafael Valverde (7, 3.86)

Attendance – A far sight less than the 26,834 tickets sold for this clash of the titans…

Astros.com Recap (Grodsky?)

Pirates.com Recap (Jenifer Langosch…Do your self a favor and don’t GIS her.)

Before the Game:

In honor of the Pirates coming to town, I made a big plate of haluski and heated up some pierogies.  If I could have found Yuengling, that would have been the trifecta.  But when faced with the option of Steel City Reserve or Shiner Black, Texas won.  Just like in the eventual, inevitable war of secession.  And also the game.

Prior to the game, Pirates manager John Russell had a closed door meeting with his team.  He reportedly told them, “Here’s my advice to you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can’t buy backbone. Don’t let them forget it. Thank you.”

Game Recap:

There’s a lot being made of Mike Hampton winning 10 straight decisions against the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4 of them coming this season.  It’s sort of being glossed over that prior to the 2009 season he hadn’t faced them since 2004.  So Mike Hampton beat the Pirates again?  Oh that’s great. I wrote a hit play and directed it, so I’m not sweating it either.

Hampton wasn’t exactly sharp, but he didn’t really have to be to beat the last place Pirates.  Hampton allowed only six base runners in his seven innings, nibbled a bunch and took advantage of an alert defense behind him.  If only he could figure out how to do that against any team not from Pittsburgh.  On the other hand, he’s left-handed, so I assume he’ll be on someone’s 15-day D.L. for several more years, regardless of actual results.

By the way, I’m almost 38.  I don’t suffer from any sort of memory imparement that I’m aware of, but do you remember the Pirates being good?  Was Omar Moreno on the team then?

At the plate, the Astros got to Virgil Vasquez early, with Geoff Blum doing the damage in the bottom of the first with a 2-out, 2-run triple, plating Lance Berkman and Miguel Tejada .  Mostly to show how poorly Garrett Jones tracks baseballs hit, well, anywhere, the play was sent to New York for further review.  Or CB Bucknor needed a Dove Bar break.  One of those.

Miguel Tejada doubled in the other RBIs in this game in the fifth, scoring Hampton and Michael Bourn.

Outside of the totally necessary replay review in the bottom of the first, the only real drama in the game was in the eight inning, when set-up man LaTroy Hawkins gave Humberto Quintero what amounted to gas face.  Quintero approched the mound after Hawkins grimaced after a pitch…

Quintero: Your mind is as warped as your face, LaTroy

Hawkins:  Don’t get nasty, brother.

Quintero signaled for Rex Jones’ mustache to come out.  Rex came, too.  Quintero inquired, “Are you fond of that moustache?”

By this point, someone had jostled Cecil Cooper from his in-game coma, so he trotted out to the mound…

Hawkins: The truth is, neither one of us has the slightest idea where this relationship is going. We can’t predict the future.

Cooper: We don’t have a relationship.

Hawkins: But we’re friends.

Cooper: Yes, and that’s all we’re *going* to be. Well, yes…

Hawkins: That’s all I meant by “relationship.” You want me to grab a dictionary?

After which, a bewildered Cooper returned to his restful slumber and Hawkins closed out the inning.

After the Game:

Oswalt: What’s the secret, Mike?

Hampton: The secret?

Oswalt: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.

Hampton: The secret, I don’t know… I guess you’ve just gotta find something you love to do and then… do it for the rest of your life. For me, it’s elementary school teachers.

Coming up:

Maholm versus Moehler.  Baseball fever.  Catch it.

astros 0, giants 13

mctaggert’s take

chron’s boxscore

so, what was that? 

if you made it through the first third of the game the astros played against the giants on friday night, you know exactly what i am talking about.  you were saying it, too. 

but, a scant three innings earlier, as the game was starting i found myself singing thinking… 

maybe he’ll win

and why not?  paulino pitched extremely well in his last start against the tigers.  he’s shown some great stuff.  the astros have been putting together wins on the road.  it’s the last series before coming home to the weak loving arms of the pirates and nats.  the astros could go out, get the first one of three against the giants with a nice outing by felipe, and end the night with a .500 record.  no high expectations, mind you.  just some good-looking possibilities. 

loaded with danger   

it was obvious that paulino forgot to bring his location with him to the mound last night.  he was up in the zone.  no breaking ball to speak of.  hitting his spots?  uh, no.  the giants saw this, took advantage of his ineffectiveness, and waylaid him.  nine runs on nine hits in two innings.  with an eye toward saving the bullpen, coop let him twist in the wind for as long as possible, before bringing fulchino in to try and stop the bleeding.

conquering the space around him   

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is unbelievable,'” Paulino said. “I threw all my pitches, they hit everything I threw up there.”

the reality is, these kinds of games happen sometimes.  everyone knows and understands this.  even felipe paulino.  but the thing is, when you are part of a temporary 6-man rotation, and your team is trying to gear up to make their patented second-half run….well, you just can’t afford to have these things happen now. 

if paulino wants a spot in the rotation when it goes back to 5-man after the all-star break, he’s got to do a much better job of showing the astros that he can be counted on as a consistent number 4 or 5.  time is running out for him to get it together.  maybe getting smacked around by the giants will do him some good.  depending on how well ortiz pitches, paulino’s next outing has the potential to seal the deal. 

one thing leads to another

“You’ve just got to battle through it,” manager Cecil Geoff Blum said. “After two innings, you still have plenty of innings left to scratch back. But we didn’t put anybody on base.”

“We know that we’re down by nine, but we still have to keep the same approach we’ve had during the game,” Blum said. “We had scored a lot of runs the last couple of games, so I don’t think that any of us really wanted to push any harder than we needed to or panic too much. I still think we wanted to have some good [at-bats] and do the best we could when we got a pitch to hit.”

what blum said.  but the offense just wasn’t able to get anything going to combat the huge deficit they faced.  however, it should be noted, the kid that started for the giants was pretty exceptional.

the impression that you sell

despite the loss, the astros still find themselves very much in contention and poised to climb to the top of the standings over the next week.  and if they can find a way to hit lincecum and johnson, things look even better for the astros as they make their way back to houston for the final homestand going into the break. 

gbb’s series preview

the incredulousness of the GameZone