“I hear we drafted a catcher today. Call him up. Now.”<\/p>\n
That’s Brad Ausmus possibly contemplating his unexpected role as the starting catcher in his final season as an Astro<\/em>. Link<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n on Thursday, the Astros optioned catcher J.R. Towles to Triple-A Round Rock and purchased the contract of Humberto Quintero,<\/p>\n Cooper assured Towles that he was happy with his defensive output.<\/p>\n “It wasn’t about his catching, game-calling,” Cooper said. “It was more about his offense. …He needs to go play and get his confidence back a little bit. He’ll do that. He took it well.”<\/p>\n “I was trying to get things figured out and people were saying, ‘Do this, do that,'” Towles said. “I was trying everything. I think I need to get back to the basics and try to work things out. Hopefully, that’s what I’ll do [in Round Rock].” Link<\/a><\/p>\n Towles sacrificial lamb<\/strong> On the choice of catcher Jason Castro as the number one pick in the draft,<\/strong> “I hear we drafted a catcher today. Call him up. Now.” That’s Brad Ausmus possibly contemplating his unexpected role as the starting catcher in his final season as an Astro. Link<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orangewhoopass.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Astros hit .227 during the road trip, and two-thirds of the middle of the order — Miguel Tejada and Carlos Lee — barely produced. Tejada was 0-for-4 Thursday, and hit .111 on the trip (4-for-36). Lee, also 0-for-4 during the series finale, had six hits in 35 at-bats during the trip, for a .171 average. Link<\/a><\/p>\n
\n“This was a not a need pick at all,” Heck said. “We need to add talent, and we can’t walk by a player just because of need [at a particular position]. He was the best player available.” Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"