No Lyon, this hurt
Phillies win on a walk-off hit
Phillies 5
Astros 4
WP: Baez (1-0)| LP: Lyon (0-1)
Boxscore
Gamezone
*sigh*
No this was not a playoff game, and yes it is only *one* game. But I was robbed. I was deprived. I was violated. Okay, scratch that last one off the list. Yes, I felt cheated of the sheer joy, the ecstasy, the thrill! Of seeing an Astro’s win? Nah, in that sense it is only one game and there will be plenty those this year… maybe. No, what I felt was the gut-punch this fine day of first game baseball: I didn’t get to see sad, lonely, almost driven to tears, definitely driven to anger and rage, camera shots of Phillie Phan.
Bring out the tasers!
But alas, no joy in Lyonville tonight as the Phillie Phans were actually given a special gift from the local nine. That being, of course, a come from behind, last inning, we haven’t done anything today, yes, we’re kind of sleepwalking through this game, ho-hum wake us up when games matter, win from the Phillies. 
Truth be told, the one time Phillie Brett Myers, was masterful all day, somehow mesmerizing his former team into said snoozer performance. Maybe Gunther taught the hurler his special hypnotic stare or something, because no Phillie really could figure out Mr. Myers all day long. Yes, they got two runs off of him and yes, it all started with a walk, but had his battery-mate on this day, one Senor Q, done his job and, well, caught the ball with his mitt, the chances are that Myers escapes this game with no runs scored and a perhaps a victory cigar.
Before we get to the sad moments in the ninth inning, there was plenty of Phillie Phan gnashing of teeth throughout the day, so maybe I should take solace in that. Who am I kidding, no… I don’t. I want my crying Phillie Phan when the umpires make their way off the field. I want battery chucking. I want some police chase around the stadium, complete with calf roping style knock down and handcuffing! I was robbed I tells ya, robbed! Any way, the good part of the day was the Astros offense, a not to shabby of performance from up and down the lineup against the man who is arguably the best there is in baseball, one Roy Halliday. Houston didn’t do anything spectacular off him, but he didn’t look all that special against the young Houston nine who took good approaches to the batters box to see if they could make one or two fall for them.
Baby I was Bourn to run!
Eventually, one run crossed the plate so that pretty much ended the day for Halliday, that and the fact he had to use a ton of pitches to get these scrappers off his back. Enter the faithful seventh when the offense came alive and took the wood to Phillie bullpen members and put out three more runs for a nice looking 4-0 lead late in the game. The highlight of course, was the two run triple by Baby Back Bourn (why do you guys nickname him after ribs? Huh? What? I have that wrong? Oops, sorry). Any way, just watching the kid run makes anyone smile and smile I did. Roadrunner has nothing on Bourn. RRB?
So on to the ninth they went, holding on to a 4-2 lead and to what seemed like the sweet sights of Phillie Phan barfing on someone within smelling distance… errr…. reach. Not to be as the 2011 closer for the club, Brandon Lyon, basically had nothing when he went in and had nothing when he came out at game’s end. Three Phillie runs, everyone is happy, nobody gets shot.
Go get them tomorrow.
Astros at Phillies – Spring has Sprung, so Fuck the Cardinals
Opening Day 2011
Opening Day again! We Are Your Astros! (and We Hope We Don’t Suck). Yeah, everyone’s a little pessimistic to open the year, but there are reasons to be hopeful. We don’t have so much dead weight at the top of the payroll, for one thing. Well ok, there’s Carlos Lee, but that’s a special case; you could never move that contract, not even with Roy Oswalt’s bulldozer.
Plus, here’s a good omen for opening the season – the fuckstick Cardinals already choked away their home opener, so the Astros start the season a half-game up! And I don’t know who’s going to win the Central this year, but I’ll tell you who won’t, and that’s the gimpy-ass shitbird Cardinals.
Because I’ve seen a sign. I’ve seen a portent of the Jakes’ season, and it’s not pretty. I found it, in all places, in the crawlspace under my house. (No, it wasn’t behind the dead hookers.) No, I went under there to check the rat traps I’d set out a while back. I live out in the country so we get unwanted critters from time to time. OK, all the time.
Plus this is rural Arkansas and there are no building codes or any of that fancy shit, and previous owners have sort of cobbled new pieces onto the house over the last 70 years. The house is built on the side of a hill, so the crawlspace gets lower and tighter as you go further back. It was partially built on an even older foundation, and I don’t know what before that, so there’s crumbling walls and old metal pipes and junk all over the place. I can crouch when I go in the little crawlspace door, but to get back to the rat traps I have to lay on my stomach, then kind of turn and squeeze my ass through a hole in an old foundation wall, and then crawl over rocks and broken glass and shit. It’s fucking nasty. And that’s just to get to the spot where the rats hide, which is all matted down with old fur.
So a few months ago I put out half a dozen of those big-ass rat traps, the kind that are like a bigger mousetrap, but with a huge goddamn spring, and a crushing bar that could break your finger. In fact it says that right on the package, “This thing can break your finger, so be careful, dumbass.” Well, they worked like a charm on rat necks too, and I cleaned out a couple of the little bastards. (I know what you’re thinking, but none of them were White Rats.)
We didn’t hear any more scratching in the floor, and the cats didn’t either, so I figured we’d gotten rid of the rats for the time being. I baited the traps with peanut butter in case any more rats came by with big relocation plans, and pretty much forgot about them over the winter.
Then a few days ago we started hearing scratching again, so I knew I had to go back under the house and reset the traps. I squeezed underneath and crawled way back to where the traps are, and most of them were still cocked and ready to fire. But one of the traps had caught something small and had flipped upside down. I thought maybe it was a little rat or a mouse, but when I turned it over, I saw it was a red bird! A cardinal, way back under the ass-end of my house, with its neck crushed in a big fucking rat-trap.
I said, “Hello, LaGenius! I see that Spring has sprung!”
*****
Well you just can’t ignore a sign like that. I knew baseball season was near. But the thing is, that’s not the first time I’ve gotten an omen about the Shitbirds. I’ll explain below, after the season opener …
Astros at Phillies – Spring has Sprung, so Fuck the Cardinals
Citizens Bank Park
Friday, April 1, 12:05 p.m. CT
Saturday, April 2, 6:05 p.m. CT
Sunday, April 3, 12:35 p.m. CT
You won’t hear this anywhere else, but the series is actually starting a day late because the Astros couldn’t find Citizens Bank Park. First they let Brett Myers drive the team bus, but he took a shortcut down this alley he knew, and got totally lost, and they ended up back on the highway. Then they let Hunter Pence take over but he missed the cut-off. Finally J.A. Happ said he knew where the ballpark was, so he took the wheel and accidentally parked at the home team’s locker room. Roy Oswalt came out to point and laugh at all the dumbasses, but when he bent over to slap his knee, like they do in Mississippi, he wreenched his back and pulled a groin muscle. Brad Lidge gave him a ride to the hospital since he was headed there anyway.
Nothing you’d want. There’s the usual Opening Day stuff, like a souvenir NL East pennant which would only be useful if you knew a fan of the Braves or the Ponzi-Mets, so you could wave it in their stupid face. The cocksucking Mets are coming to town next, so the Phillies probably should have just saved the pennant for next week. Of course, that assumes the Ponzis can even make it to Philly without having to take out a loan or cook up a complicated scheme by selling shares to all their dumbass brothers-in-law. Stupid fucking Mets.
Projected Matchups from Astros.com
Friday
Brett Myers v. Roy Halladay
Today will be Myers’ fourth Opening Day start in five years, though the other three starts were for the Phillies of course. He’s faced the Phillies once in his career – last August – and went seven innings for the win.
Brian Schneider is the only Philly with more than a handful of AB’s against Myers, but his line is a weak 8-for-39 (.205). He does have one homer and a double off Myers. Among the other Phils, Jimmy Rollins is 2-for-4 against Myers while Ryan Howard is 0-for-3 with 3 strikeouts.
Halladay is coming off a Cy Young season which included a perfect game and a postseason no-hitter. So they figured he’d earned a shot at the Astros on Opening Day. Halladay is 1-1 against the Astros and both of those decisions came last year. Carlos Lee is the only Astro who’s seen much of Halladay, going 7-for-26 (.269) with three homers. Chris Johnson is 3-for-4 against him and Michael Bourn is 3-for-7.
Saturday
Wandy Rodriguez v. Cliff Lee
Old Man Wandy has faced the Phillies three times for a 2-1 record. Current members of the Phillies have hit him pretty well, with Schneider again leading the pack at 4-for-10. Rollins, Polanco, and Howard all have homers off Wandy.
Cliff Lee is 0-2 in two career starts against Houston; both of those losses came late in 2009. Again, Carlos Lee is the only Astro who’s faced him much. El Caballo is 6-for-18 against him with two homers. Hunter Pence also goes 3-for-5 with a homer.
Sunday
J.A. Happ v. Roy Oswalt
Happ faced the Phillies once last season after they traded him to Houston and he came away with a 3-2 victory. Current Phils are a combined 3-for-17 against him, and a double from Polanco is the only extra-base hit.
OK, here’s a pitcher we know a little about. Roy’s never faced the Astros though a few of the Good Guys have batted against him. Bill Hall is 14-for-44 with five doubles and a homer, while Carlos Lee is 3-for-15.
Injury Report
Houston – Jason Castro is probably out for the year, while Kepp, Barmes, and Arias are on the 15-day DL. Happ is questionable for this series and Towles is probable.
Philadelphia – You’re not going to believe this, but Brad Lidge is starting the season on the DL. He’s joined there by Chase Utley, Domonic Brown, and some guys named Bocock and Schlitter. I dare you to go into your boss’s office and say “Utley Brown Bocock and Schlitter” three times real fast.
Loose Ends
* The cookie-cutter MLB websites look more awful every year. Here, just go take a look at the Astros front page. It looks like Pam Gardner’s dog ate the entire souvenir locker for breakfast, then took a monster dump on the website. And then Hunter Pence came racing around the corner without looking, tripped over the dog, and face-planted right into the entire mess. Thus earning his nickname, Faceplant of the Franchise.
* So that rat-trap story wasn’t the first omen I’ve had about the Jakes. Right after I moved here, in 2006, I was watching an Astros game on TV in early April and the opposing team was up to bat, so I wandered outside onto the back porch. And right there at the bottom of the steps was a dead cardinal. Bright red and freshly dead. I guess it just dropped out of the sky and landed at the bottom of my porch. So of course I took a picture, because this could be an omen if I ever saw one. And that’s the dead redbird photo that’s still on my profile.
But the dead Cardinal omen sent me a mixed message, because those fuckers went on to win the World Series that year. So I guess I didn’t interpret that signal correctly. And I don’t know what this year’s rat-trap omen means, but next year I’ll probably have a redbird tapping at my window. Feel free to interpret these omens however you will, but I’m going with “We Are Your Astros, so fuck the Cardinals in their goddamn scrawny necks.”
Happy Opening Day, everyone!
*****
Discuss Opening Day in the Gamezone.
Exhibition Game Observations by BudGirl
Red Sox 10
Astros 0
I like going to the Exhibition Game before the Season Opener. It’s an appetizer to the start of the season for me. I did not go to Spring Training this year, so it was my first view of the team I love. My observations, take them, or leave them, for what they are, are below.
First observation, I will need to remind myself about all season is keep my expectations lower and I’ll go home happy. This team is not great by any means. I cannot even pretend otherwise. This team does have a lot of players to watch and enjoy.
Second observation, I will need to remind myself about all season is the defense up the middle is SLOW. They are not going to get to baseballs like I will expect them to do. At least, not with the current roster.
Third observation, I will need to remind myself about all season is to enjoy the players for what they are and not what I expect them to be. I will admit I do have expectations for a lot of the players.
1B – Brett Wallace – first full season starting in MLB. I don’t expect Albert Pujols numbers, but if that is what he wants to give me then I’ll just suffer and take it. Another thing about Wallace that I like is the fact that he seems to care about people. Footer reported during the off-season how he went to the Children’s Hospital on his own, not a scheduled promotional visit. Any kid with that kind of character deserves good things to happen.
2B – Bill Hall – first season as an Astro. I have to say I hope he hits better than he fields. He looks SLOW in the field.
3B – Chris Johnson – hopefully this season is a healthy and prosperous season for Mr. CJ. The team is going to need his bat. I think he’ll settle down in the field. He doesn’t seem like a Hall of Fame player at this time, but he seems like a good serviceable player.
SS – Angel Sanchez – another SLOW infielder. I do not remember him being that SLOW last season. This will be interesting to see during the season. I think he will be one that gets to become the utility player on the bench.
LF – Carlos Lee – dude just needs to play and work hard and good things will happen for him and the Astros. I have a feeling Mills told him what he expects and the consequences of not getting what he expects.
CF – Michael Bourn – SBB has a lot to maintain. Being represented by Borass means he is going to have to do well to get the big money. He’s also going to be making a lot of highlight reel catches.
RF – Hunter Pence – Ugh. I for the life of me cannot understand why fans love him. He looks HORRID in the field. I have a feeling Hunter will do enough to maintain the FotF tag he’s been given but I really think it needs to go to someone else.
C – Humberto Quintero – I refuse to believe that a clown is going to be his back-up. Great opportunity for Q. We know what we are getting here and should have no illusions of grandeur. It does suck that Jason Castro got injured, but what can we do about it? I was asking about Chavez last night, whatever happened to him.
In regard to Pitching, well…., we will just have to sit back and hope the balls find a glove quickly.
Chuck on Hall vs. Hamels
Chuck, Live from Kissimmee (3/14/2011)
I’ve watched too many spring games to believe that what you see in March is what you’ll see in April. But I wouldn’t mind seeing some consistency out of the projected starting pitching, some decent defense, no further base running injuries and maybe a little hitting out of the team’s touted prospects.
I’d dreaded recapping the last five games I’d seen. And so I hadn’t. They were mostly shitfests, variations on the same theme. But apparently spicy Vietnamese crawfish give Limey an adrenaline burst and he managed to beat me to it. Thanks, Limey!
Let me first address the Bill Hall – Cole Hamels standoff. This is really all on Laz Diaz. Remember, Carlos had just hit a home run. Hall strides to the plate, raises his right hand to signal for time like he always does as he digs in and readies himself. I personally don’t think Hall takes an inordinately long time – he scrapes four or five times with his back foot, taps the bat, grabs it with the back hand and is ready to go. Hamels was obviously pissed that he’d left the last pitch up. I’d noticed that when Carlos emerged onto the on-deck area he didn’t use any sort of weight, he just had his bat and didn’t even swing it to warm up at all. He stood there with the bat on his shoulder and watched the warm-up pitches. He strode out into the batter’s box and smashed the first pitch he saw over the left field fence.
So Hamels is pissed. Hall enters the box and has his back hand up asking for time. He’s looking down at the dirt as he readies himself. I have no idea what Diaz was looking at because he’s just standing there with his hands hanging naturally, not signaling time out at all. Hamels goes into his wind-up and about midway through Hall realizes that Hamels is trying to pitch to him right about the same time that Diaz realizes that he should have been signaling time out. Diaz waves his arms for time out and Hamels stops his delivery mid-stream.
Hall again raises his back hand, his right hand, and digs in. This time Diaz is raising his hands, too. Hamels ignores all of this and begins his motion. He’s still pissed and is intent to pitch. Hall seems to know that Diaz has time out so he’s not looking at Hamels, but Diaz is. Once Hamels gets into his wind-up Diaz shouts for time out and Hall, annoyed, steps out of the box entirely and takes a couple of steps, takes a breath, composes himself and does it all over again.
At last Hamels waits until Hall drops the hand and, more relevantly, until the home plate umpire gives him the signal to pitch. Hamels winds up and delivers a fastball high and tight, chest high, maybe ten inches off the plate. It’s not meant to hit Hall, but definitely meant to deliver a message. Hall steps out of the box with his left foot, right foot still in the box. He knows what’s happened, of course, but he’s calm. Hamels gets the ball back from Ruiz and turns towards the mound and after a step or two suddenly turns back towards the plate and shouts something at Hall. Hall stiffens up, surprised, and then strides towards the mound, shouting at the pitcher. Diaz immediately jumps in front of Hall and shoves him back although Hall never made a move to charge.
Hall is not the bad guy here. Hamels got taken deep, was a dick, was a dick again, threw inside to Hall and then chirped about it. Fuck that prick. Hall got a knock his next at bat and was followed by a Chris Johnson home run. When CJ crossed the plate Hall slapped his open palm forcefully on Johnson’s chest, shouting in catharsis.
What else?
Steele had, what, five at bats? He never managed to get the ball out of the infield. He’s fast, though, I can tell you that. Drew Locke gave the Phillies their tying run. With a runner on third he caught a fly in very shallow right and his throw sailed over the cutoff man and was at least fifteen feet up the line. It was a shockingly bad throw, worse than anything Pence could dream up. I have no idea why Martinez was sent back to the minors camp while the team continues to evaluate Steele, Shuck and Locke.
The Phillies’ winning run came on a colossal, Little League style fuck-up. Esposito was catching and with a fast runner on second he let a ball get through his legs. He definitely should have blocked it; it really wasn’t that hard a chance. As he jogged back to retrieve the ball the runner made an aggressive turn around third. Esposito fired to Navarro at third but mistimed the throw and gave Navarro a difficult throw to handle. The runner broke for home once he knew that the ball was coming back to third and made it easily. It was very, very ugly. Just for balance Corporan threw one into right field giving the Phillies a run. There were men on first and second and the runner on second stole third easily. This was with Figueroa pitching, and he paid no attention to the base runners at all. Corporan had the good idea of throwing to first but Wallace was tardy to the bag and the throw went wide. Free run.
Last thing – late in the game Q singled and took an unwisely aggressive turn himself. He beat the throw back to first but just barely. He slid awkwardly head-first back to the bag and lay there for some time in apparent pain. Great, I’m thinking, the team’s two starting catchers are out thanks to base running misadventures and we’re stuck with Moe Bandy.
Q got up finally. He was promptly advanced to second where he slid again, awkwardly, and the team immediately sent Bogusevic in to pinch run.
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- Who’s the dude in the red polo?
You Spin Me Right Round…
What is becoming my annual pilgrimage to Florida for Spring Training is also yielding what is becoming my annual Limey Time. Following on from last year’s recap, here now is the 2011 trip report.