Recap from 5/27:

More offense from the league’s best offense in the month of May as the good guys trounced the Avian flu carrying flying rats by 8-2. Giving credit where it’s due, Shawn Chacon actually earned a decision - obviously a win - and was awesome against everybody but Albert Pujols (which happens). Hunter Pence went 5-5, Kaz Matsui had two of the weakest singles you’ll ever see, and Miggy Tejada went deep off losing pitcher Braden Looper. Rick Ankiel’s wildness didn’t help in a losing cause, either. Too soon?

Speaking of Tejada, it’s his hackiness that has worried me throughout the season. So, I finally took the time to look at the numbers, and I was blown away:

Career Pitches/PA: 3.78

2008 Pitches/PA: 3.82

His ABs in the 1st and 9th, which combined for four pitches and a strikeout, were horrific. The AB in the 2nd only saw three pitches, but the other two ABs were solid.

Now, let’s put that in perspective. Hunter Pence has seen 3.70 pitches/PA so far this year, and Lance Berkman, that icon of patience and all things I love, has seen…only 3.76 pitches/PA?

Dammit, it looks like I broke Joe Morgan Rule #1: Don’t use stats to disprove your (mis)perception.

5/28:

We get Wandy today as he goes against former World Series hero Adam Wainwright in a battle for 2nd place behind the eventually doomed Cubbies.  First pitch sometime around 7:15 PM CDT.

Pujols is just 1-12 with 2BB against Wandy, but hopefully we won’t get any reversion to the mean, again, tonight.

As long as Sampson and Scuffy are in our rotation, we are hurting. Wandy’s only rehab start wasn’t bad, but he also failed to K a AA hitter in 6IP. The increase in his K rate has been the key to Wandy’s improvement over the past couple of years. We’ll give him a “gimme” tonight, but it sure is nice to have him back.

Why, who is this delightful young lady and the goofy looking dude behind her?

You know, I’m not normally wont to post junk like this.  I just think Hunter looks damn goofy in this pic

For more Terrie, click here.  And, I hope it’s common sense, but the link ain’t safe for work.  In fact, you might want some alone time after clicking the link.

h/t Deadspin.

In the last Rights and Wrongs, Casey mentioned, more delicately than I, that my harshness of Tejada is undeserved and that we are better off with him than we were with what we gave up.  I hope to revisit this shortly, but I still think the Tejada trade is going to come back to haunt us, but I also understand this is my admitted bias against Tejada and my belief he’s over-rated.  Anyway, to the pitchers…

Roy Oswalt, 5.00 ERA, 1.30 WHIP (numbers from 5/1 - 5/18)  - Undoubtedly, Roy is doing considerably better, but he’s still struggling.  His harsh start against the Rangers tweaked his numbers during the hot streak, but he is still getting hit at a high rate for him.  We are not yet two months through the season, and we aren’t yet seeing attrition problems in the pen.  We still need Roy to pick it up as I still think he’s our staff’s only hope to keep us healthy.

Brandon Backe, 4.50 ERA, 1.33 WHIP - About the same numbers that Roy is putting up, but Backe is doing something he’s never done before: he’s striking people out.  His control, or lack thereof, is probably helping increase his K rate, but if he can keep that rate and lower his atrocious walk rate even 1BB/9IP, he’ll be the poster child for Tommy John quick recoveries.

Jose Valverde, 0.00 ERA, .50 WHIP - Dear bfd, you suck.  Love, Jose.  After struggling for the first three weeks of the season, Valverde has walked only one over his past 11 IP, and he’s been almost unhittable in the meantime.

Geoff Geary, 0.00 ERA, .95 WHIP - Geary has been a solid pickup so far and has been hot over the streak.  Of course, he now has a strained groin and will miss some time.

Brian “Scuffy” Moehler,  2.70 ERA, 1.40 WHIP - He pitched well in a couple of spot starts, and he’s about the most WYSIWYG pitcher in the majors aside from Paul Byrd: good control, lots of hits against, and the occasional foreign substance (and, no, that wouldn’t be Matsui’s anal fissure salve).  Scuffy was hit harder in his last start, which will be a trend as he goes around the league and they see more pitches off him.

Doug Brocail, 4.32 ERA, 1.08 WHIP - Still pitching very well, but still on a pace to appear in over half our games.  It’s guys like Brocail and and Geary and Wright that most worry me about being over-used.

Chris Sampson, 5.51 ERA, 1.53 WHIP - Pitching slightly better - especially if it’s against the Cubs or Dodgers - but it’s time to find a replacement for him.

Shawn Chacon, 6.06 ERA, 1.86 WHIP - Chacon was extraordinarily lucky in the early going with his batting average on balls in play as regression to the mean and his poor control have come back to bite him on the ass.

Wesley Wright, 4.26 EAR, 1.74 WHIP - Most importantly, a 5 BB to 2 K ratio during the streak.

Leaving off Molotov Borkowski and Fernando Nieve for expediency reasons.

Overall, outside of Backe, a little Roy, Brocail, and Jose, our pitching has been very mediocre.  If there is one reason for our streak - and this should be of no surprise, it’s Puma.  His bat is so hot that he is literally carrying this team right now.  Matsui and Pence are adding a ton to the mix, and Lee and Tejada are in the picture, but this is all about Puma.

Because we have nothing on the farm, we should be focused on making a trade to pick up at least one, if not two, starting pitchers.  Wandy will be back soon as he has a rehab start in Corpus tomorrow, but we simply must replace Chacon and Sampson if we are to compete.  We can’t ride Puma’s coattails all season, but we will need to rely more on our pitching at some point.

An open letter to Hunter Pence:

Hey Hunter,

Feeling comfy?  Still pulling small pieces of glass out of your legs and arms?  Look, we need to talk.  I loved watching you last year, when you were all piss and vinegar and running into walls and stuff.  Your enthusiasm was something I hadn’t seen since Craig Biggio was still Craig Biggio, and the fact that you were shaping up to be a .300/20 kind of guy was damn fine.  There were concerns about your ability to hit a breaking ball, but I figured that you’d adapt to that just like you’ll eventually adapt to opening closed doors before going through them.

But what the hell is going on, Spaz? You’re batting .179 as of today, with ten strikeouts and no walks.  NO. WALKS.  Your plate approach right now is worse than Carl Landry’s free throw form. When the ‘Stros signed Kaz Matsui and his fissures, he was intended to be the #2 hitter, but when his butt trouble intervened, Coop tapped you for that lineup spot.  A lot of people were worried when we signed Kaz, because he’s an injury risk, and he has a massage therapist and all that, but he’s an ideal second hitter because he can hit behind a runner and move people up.  Especially since Michael Bourn is faster than a Saturn V rocket, any well-placed contact could create a scoring opporutunity.  Barring that, a walk brings up the Puma and the heart of the lineup. 

Kaz can do all of those things, Hunter.  Coop thought you could too, but now you’re flailing like the T-1000 in the molten steel, Bourn’s getting stranded on base, and the boppers are getting fewer pitches to hit.  It’s killing this supposedly potent lineup, Spaz.  At this point, Towles or Loretta would be a better fit for the two hole until the anal fissures are healed. 

But I still have some shred of faith that you’ll bring this around.  I don’t want you to stand like a statue at the plate, refusing to swing.  That’s what Morgan Ensberg did, and now he’s picking A-Rod’s dingleberries in the Bronx.   In case you haven’t figured it out, the opposing pitcher’s job is not to give you something that you can hit into the Crawford Boxes; he’s trying to get you out, preferably without giving you a chance to advance a runner or do anything productive.  Lately, you’ve made some dumb-ass pitchers look like that cheater Jake Peavy.   Hurt them before they hurt you, you lanky bastard; just remember that hurting them doesn’t mean swinging like freaking El Kabong at every opportunity.

I’ve tried logic, and I’ve tried cajoling.  If this keeps up, all I’ve got left is bribery and threats of physical harm.  Maybe if I put Marissa Miller on the other side of a sliding glass door, I could do both at once.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that: I don’t want to see you hurt, and Marissa’s been having such a great time in my basement.

Sincerely,

Ted Striker

In the nascent days of this site, I was quickly outed as perhaps the only optimist about the Astros on our staff. Perhaps I’m delusional, driven mad by the Jose Cruz t-shirt that I’ve worn every day since September 14th, 1986, to the point that it’s difficult to see where I end and the shirt begins. That shirt went through puberty with me, and if that makes me crazy, then I don’t want to be sane. I do think that there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it won’t be ALL wailing and gnashing of teeth for the Stros this year, so allow me to put on my seersucker suit and straw hat and begin my soliloquy.

/tugs at lapels

I may not be a big city lawyer, folks. I may not have any fancy acronyms or statistics to reinforce my arguments, but I do know one thing: the Astros sure as hell aren’t the Pirates. And that’s something we can all be thankful for. Always think of folks less fortunate than yourself, that’s what my pappy always said, God rest his soul. Before you go to bed tonight, say a prayer for little Ian Snell; that boy can pitch some wildfire, but he may never be on a 75 win team. You think about that.

Lot of folks running around these days talking ’bout how the Astros ain’t got any pitching, and the offense has anal fissures, and the bullpen is two pieces of twine and Jose Valverde, and on the surface, you might be right about some of that. The anal fissures, to be sure.

/wipes forehead with monogrammed handkerchief

Shew. But let me tell you a few things about Ed Wade. See, Eddie ain’t too popular in Philadelphia, that’s for sure, and he’s starting to develop a reputation around these parts, too. But Eddie hasn’t been employed for this long around MLB by being dumb. Like it or not, the man had a plan, and he stuck to it. These Astros he’s brought in are fast, and good with the glove, and that was the stated off-season goal: speed and defense. Sometimes shit happens, like your lump-ass left fielder crushes the leg of the best defensive shortstop in baseball, and you have to let the rangy kid who couldn’t hit worth a damn but could make Gold Glove plays look routine go off to find himself in Minnesota. And while the guy you replace him with has a cannon for an arm (and a rocket for a bat), you’re gonna find yourself missing the ease that ol’ AE brought to the game.

But that’s the only exception to Eddie’s plan. Our little Oriental friend with the butt trouble, well, some say he’s a product of a high-altitude environment. Point to numbers, to PECOTA and OPS; well, I say PECOTA is a kind of veal, and OPS was an unheard hippity-hop song from 1990! You see, of course anyone’s road numbers in the NL West are going to look bad outside Coor’s; hell, every other stadium in that division (apart from Pac Bell) is a hitter’s nightmare. You try to have a road OPS over .900 when you play a large portion of your road games at Petco Park. Like my momma always said, you can’t catch a coon-hound with grease.

We never knew what the hell momma was saying half the time. Must’ve been all that time working in a lead paint factory that did it to her.

And let’s not forget the kids now! Kids are our future, our “hope” like that Osama guy likes to say. Hunter Pence! Now that’s a baseball player! So long as he doesn’t pop his damn fool head off diving over the right field railing to grab a foul ball, that boy’s gonna make men weep and women swoon (if they like guys with peanut heads) for years here. He may have a sophomore slump, but he’s no Luke Scott.

/ducks flying trash

Sorry folks, forgot the reaction that name gets. No, Pence’ll be a .300/30/90 badass before you know it, and he’ll steal him some bases, too. Speaking of stealing bases, I know there’s lots of you who talk about Wily Tavares like he was one step above crippled, what with his low OBP and whatnot, but that boy could disrupt a defense with his speed in ways that were a site to behold; well, Michael Bourn runs a 4.3 40. That’s NFL fast, and it’ll cause the same kind of hell that Wily T. did, and I will bet any man, woman, child or Chinaman that he’ll have a .390 OPS this season, since he seems to have gotten his free-swinging reputation in check this spring. Seriously, would you really like Lidge back, people?

Now, there ain’t much positive to say about the pitching. There just ain’t. I could tell you about little Wesley Wright, the 13-year old with the elastic arm who could become an eighth inning savior, but when that’s the silver lining in this pitching staff, well, that just about says it all. But I’d ask you to look at something before you say, “Them dumbasses Wade & Purpura traded all the studs on the farm for a flea-bit buncha mules”: let’s look at those studs.

• Jason Hirsh: less than 120 IP in 2007, 5-7 record, 4.81 ERA. Whee doggies! There’s a #2 starter!
• Taylor Bucholz : only 9 starts, mostly worked from the bullpen. Respectable-ish 1.33 WHIP.
• Troy Patton:

And everyone else is either a prospect or a reliever. So there’s really not a lick of good any of the pitchers we sent out of town could do for the 2008 team. Now, the future implications of this kind of thinning are pretty obvious, but I’m more concerned about the lack of position players in the minors right now; it looks like a damned goofball, feel-good comedy down there. When these “ancient” 32 year old offensive mainstays finally hang up their Twinkies and B12 and head home, who’s gonna replace THEM? Pitching prospects are a dime a dozen, but you have to pay bushels of money for a 35 homer-100 RBI slugger.

Well, I best wrap this up. Daisy’ll be calling me from the front porch for a pitcher of lemonade and a basket of her fried chicken. I swear, if I find any of those hard-to-eat thighs in there, I’m gonna beat that woman black and blue. But you need not be blue your own self: these Astros may lose, and they may lose a lot, but they’re gonna win about 77-82 games or so, and they’re gonna be a helluva lot of fun to watch when they’re hitting on all cylinders. Just you trust an old country lawyer on that one, y’hear?