Seems to me that in the dissection of lineup construction, defensive alignments, who should play and where and in what position of the lineup, that the missing ingredient of the "power" game has gone just below the radar. There is so much noise surrounding the Houston Astros that it is hard to weed out the simple reasons for a lack of success by the Good Guys. BTW - now I know why the marketing department chose "The Return of the Good Guys" as the 2007 slogan. They knew Pettitte and Clemens would not be back! As MRaup has in his sig "2007 - The Return of the Good Guys! So long to the rat bastards!"... but I digress.
Any way, the failure of Burke, the call up of Pence, the chase by Biggio, the MoBerg experiment, the Mark Loretta bench spot, the sending down of Eric Bruntlett, the Lee horse antics... all have kept us entertained, amused and preplexed all at the same time. Blogs and blogs of bandwidth have been given over to these exhausted and tiresome topics, but has any of it really touched on the reason we're seeing a talented team like the Houston Astros at slightly below .500? Some might be touchpoints for good analysis of "what needs fixin'" I'm sure. But the thing that is starting to stand out for me most is the lack of a power game so far. It is preplexing and somewhat surprising given how much I really thought they had in terms of fireworks in this lineup. I don't really know why this team doesn't produce more power, and not just homeruns mind you, but gap to gap power and overall just some nasty slugging percentages in the middle of the lineup.
MoBerg decides he really likes being a walking machine and that the top of the lineup suits him best. This is a guy who was pencilled in at #5 this offseason and it was hoped he'd provide 25 or more homeruns. I don't think he'll do that at his current approach to hitting indicates. Luke Scott has been equally dissapointing, proving his hot/cold streak is an earned reputation. But what I see from Luke so far is that he isn't really going to provide much in terms of power like his once promise said he would in the minors. There was a time you could go to the Dell Diamond any night of the week and Luke would be launching one over the fence. Lee? Seems the thinking with him is that he fell in love with the Crawford Boxes and altered his swing to match his attempts to take advantage of it. Lee actually leads the league in RBI, but where is the power in this man's game? With a little more oomph, this guy wouldn't just be leading the league, he'd be chasing after the league record for RBIs in a season! You can see a monster ready to break out, but come on now, break out already and get some pills over that fence! Hunter Pence? Look, I know the talk is pretty much that you're in love with the guy or hate him and that is just not fair to anyone who decides to talk honestly about him. Pence is a nice player, but right now, he's a very average player and in some sense a below average player who perhaps will get better. But the Astros can't really be seriously thinking they can afford to make a minor leaguer go from slighty below average to average for a season and think that is a good tradeoff right now, can they? They need a CF who can hit with some power and play solid defense if they're really serious about their need right now. And said player has to provide power to this lineup as well. Is that Pence? It's going to take perhaps a season or two for them to realize that from him unfortunately, unless something clicks in and Gunther just absolutely figures out the majors and starts to swing a seriously mean bat. I'd say that by Memorial Day, they'll know what they can reasonably expect from Pence this year and leave it at that. So that leaves Lance Berkman.
Lance Berkman, hitless in his first three at-bats until he logged an eighth-inning single, took responsibility for his part. He also wondered if the Astros had the "right combination," lineup-wise.
"I don't know if it's the composition of the lineup ... the individual parts of our lineup look pretty good," he said. "We just haven't found the right combination. We've had some good games, but we haven't been consistent.
"I'm certainly to blame for that. We haven't been hitting many home runs. We're going to have to hit a few to have a consistent offense."
Funny how simple this game can be broken down and yet how complicated the answer is to implement. Why is Lance having a seriously off season? Last year, even with an out of whack offense, Berkman still had MVP consideration numbers, so what can possibly be the problem? Pitchers are not pitching to him any more? I'm not sure that Berkman isn't getting anything to hit. I've watched for awhile and Berkman just seems lost to me while hitting left handed. His swing isn't long, nor is he bailing out or has a broken swing (mechanics are off). He's just missing the ball, as if the bat has a huge hole in the middle and ball sails right through it into the catcher's mitt. Balls that Lance usually launches into the right field seats are now either missed or Lance is beating into the ground harmlessly to a second or first baseman. I just don't know why Lance isn't hitting and hitting for more power as it were. I really don't. Everything seems to be alright, it's just not there yet. But is time the healer that will make this all better for Lance? I sure hope so, else this is going to be a very long season of trying to figure out why this team doesn't win more games.
