Three starters out and except for the Valverde meltdown, the Astros would have won two out of three in Philadelphia. All things considered, the team is winning about as much as can be reasonably expected. They need the starters back pronto. The bench is beginning to be overexposed. That is why they are bench players - for whatever reason, they can't play effectively on an everyday basis. Erstad's swings look as bad as Pence's.
I came down from NY and went to all three games in Philadelphia (God help me). Bruntlett was booed loudly (by the more vocal "fans") the whole series, followed by shrieks of "you're terrible" after a ground-out or whatever, as well as un-sarcastic declarations of "Rollins woulda had it" on every grounder through the left side. I cannot understand the mindset where someone has the gall to harrass and judge their own team's
bench player. What do you expect, that he should jump in for an injured starter and slug .600?
Other observations:
-it really sucks riding the subway back into town with these idiots after an ending like Tuesday night's.
-whatever the Phillie Phanatic is doing is generally more of an attraction to most fans than what's happening in the game.
-Pence looked as bad in person as he has on TV. Harder to tell location from where I was sitting, but the AB where he took three straight fastballs to strike out looking was particularly strange.
-yesterday the fans in the LF bleachers were giving Carlos a lot of shit, especially towards the end. He mostly just grinned, but after he caught the last out of the 8th (I think), he faked a toss into the stands before twirling around and running back to the dugout. His subsequent HR was a nice retort too, I thought.
-there were a ton of people wearing Phillies jerseys. Among those, it seemed the white guys overwhelmingly preferred Utley. I also saw a lot of Kruk's, Hamels, Thome's, Daulton's, even Morandini. The white girls mostly had Rollins or Howard shirts.
-I only saw maybe ten or twelve other people with Astros gear on.
-all in all, not bad to see two excellent games out of three. I won't miss the fans nor the stale "sports-mall" non-neighborhood atmosphere of the ball park, however.
