For the Stros, June was an ugly month.  It’s not like the team completely sucked ass and died, though, which makes a retrospective…interesting.  However, there are some patterns that are obvious, some patterns that many fans were worried about before the season began.

Offense:

Team: .264 Avg,  .317 OBP, .426 OBP

And there you have it, really.  We play baseball like a slow-pitch softball team.  Only 65 BB in 841 ABs is not acceptable.  We had 29 HR as a team in the month, yet we only drove in 92 runs.

However, there’s another disturbing trend at work.  We are a reliant team.

 Lance Berkman: 977 OPS.  Lee: 954 OPS. Wiggington, Erstad, and Loretta were the only other guys close to 800.

Miggy Tejada:  684 OPS.  After an awesome first month, he’s been a less than 700 OPS kind of guy.  Even Adam Everett has a 653 career OPS.  IOW, yes,Tejada has been Everett without the defense and about five extra bases a month.

Kaz Matsui: 2 BB in 67 ABs.  So much for his ability to get on base.

Hunter Pence: Eh, he’s young, so he gets a gimme.

Still, thanks to Berkman and Lee, the offense wasn’t so bad.  In fact, we were what we have been: lots of HRs with nobody on base.  HRs are great, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but we need to get people on base to make them count.

Pitching:

Ever seen Semi-Pro?  That scene where Jackie Moon talks about how he’s never thrown up?  Looking at our staff would induce that.

Again, we were made up of two players: Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez.  They combined for 5 of our 10 wins,  and provided an excellent third of our innings *as a team!*  Can’t say enough good things about their performance for the month.

Scuffy Moehler??? Two of our remaining 5 wins, and some solid pitching, if not nerve-wracking.

So, let’s take away those three guys, and what do we have???

 In the other 128 innings, our pitchers gave up a whiplash-inducing 5.85 ERA and 1.66 WHIP.  This includes Chris Sampson’s outstanding transition to the pen, where he was borderline unhittable.

Brandon Backe and Shawn “Ack!” Chacon led the shit-fest, but it was truly a team effort.

Fact is, we can’t expect Scuffy to put up numbers.  Basically, we have Roy and Wandy on our pitching staff, and we have Berkman and Lee with the occasional help on offense.  Why did we have such a poor June?  Over-reliance on the few.

The truly bad news?  We are an old team, and we have been injury free.  It’s more likely to get worse than better from here.