Opening Day Thoughts
The attempt at live-blogging didn’t go off so well. I learned that it’s a helluva lot easier to blog when you aren’t being social at the same time. Oh well.
Some completely random and quick Opening Day thoughts (The Man has me on a huge hamster wheel today):
* Dear Pirates: Trade Xavier Nady now. He serves no purpose on your team, and his value will never be higher.
* What vaunted offense? Jake Peavy shut down the Astros easily. Sure, that’s a tough assignment for any team, but I just don’t think the offense will be nearly as tough as thought. Add on that we are extremely right-handed heavy, I think we’ll be especially ineffective against righties. Oh, and Ass-mass got the start. Well done, Coop, well done.
* DisplacedTexan and Nash both mentioned Eric Gagne and Kerry Wood imploding, which was definitely fun. But here’s the difference between good roster management and player development than not.
- Home-grown Carlos Marmol whiffed three of the four batters he faced. Even though he took the loss, Bob Howry can close, and Michael Wuertz has closer stuff. Wood may not hold on to the closer role, but there’s three legit backups if he falters.
- Milwaukee can fall back on David Riske and Derrick Turnbow, both of whom have previously closed.
- So, what happens if Valverde gets hurt? Who becomes the Stros closer? Doug Brocail? Shawn Chacon? Oscar Villareal? Joe Sambito??? Crap.
Posted under 2008 Season, Astros, Brad Ausmus is the worst Astro evar!, Ed Wade hurts my brain, NL Central, Purpura is Latin for dumbass, Sucky pitching
April 1st, 2008 at 10:06 am
I think we Astros fans know better than most that it takes more than just “good stuff” to be a closer. We saw Lidge implode, we saw Wheeler and Qualls fail to get the job done, and even further back, Dotel couldn’t make the transition. If Marmol had the mental tenacity to close games, I think he would have won the job right out of spring training.
And Riske has 21 career saves, 18 blown saves. Turnbow is coming off of two of two horrible seasons.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:20 am
Yeah, behind Gagne, the Brew Crew could just as easily send a literal gas can to close and get similar results.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am
@Nash: Of your list, Dotel is really the best example because he has the stuff fitting of a closer while Qualls and Wheeler do not. But Dotel seemed to do a pretty damn good job when he was the As primary closer before his arm fell off. As for Marmol, I think the Cubs went with Wood to show some kind, any kind, of return on their investment of him. Saves numbers are big and shiny. Watching them yesterday, Marmol has some of the best stuff in the game. Simply nasty.
@Ted: Brewers bullpen >>>> Astros bullpen.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I agree. I snagged Marmol in my fantasy league in a pretty late round for the Ks and WHIP. He’s absolutely nasty and I hope they stick with Wood for long enough to blow a few more games. But he certainly isn’t guaranteed to have success in that role. And as it stands, we have the best closer in the division.
And keep in mind, we marched out three of our worst relievers last night. I’ll take one run over 3.2 innings from the Borkowski, Moehler, Wright, Geary combo any night. If those guys pitch well, it’ll be huge for us. We don’t have to tire out Valverde, Villarreal, or Brocail, and we can still stay in games.
And I’d wager we’re going to face a lot of early exits by our starting pitchers. Ff we can just hang in there and keep the game within 3-4 runs, the offense at least has a chance to make a come-back. Last year sucked because our starter would go out with a 2-3 run deficit sometimes, but we’d never get a chance to witness a comeback because our crappy middle-relief would immediately give up 3-4 more and put the game out of reach.
Oh, and I know it sucks to get blanked on opening day, but let’s keep in mind that Petco park is an absolute nightmare for our team. It seemed like Pence, Berkman, and Lee were all swinging for the fences last night. That strategy might work at home, but in big ball-parks those guys are just gonna have to learn to put the ball on the ground. Especially since Bourn is going to be on second most of the time on route to breaking Ricky Henderson’s steal records, not to mention he can easily score from second.
Seriously, that guy makes Willy T look like Carlos Lee.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:27 pm
@Nash - seriously, could Bourn be any faster? If he can do anything at the plate he might be our very own Willy Mays Hayes. Now we just need to get Valverde to enter with “Wild Thing” and we’re set.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Ausmus bfd, Coop made it clear from the start that he is gonna be Oswalt’s personal catcher
April 1st, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Kyle, I did not know that.
And you must forgive me for being so paranoid about that situation. After all, Ed Wade is kind of the “King of Proven Veterans,” and I projected that onto Coop. I need to be more fair and let Coop dictate his own destiny.