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
