lindstrom is rather filthy. the cubs suck too. the entire central is a mess besides the cards. nice win. now lets tack on a sweep or two.
Ok the Stros optimist in me says the 1 thru 5 looks solid enough.. Bourn Kepp Puma Caballo Pence Feliz will be were he should be the 6 spot, Castro will make an ideal 7 hitter and Manzella will be were he should be. The starting pitching looks solid with Roy, Wandy, Myers and Norris while the pen looks to be coming together some what with Lindstrom looking good. If Paulino can emerge and Lyons can get his act together the club looks watchable.
Watching Lindstrom makes me really wonder what Ed Wade was thinking with Lyons. You can get guys like Lyon a dime a dozen. The ownership needs fan feedback on their decisions
Thats the downside of Wade, he can develop players but old 3rd basemen and middle relievers aren't his strong suit. Lyons can be a nice 8th inning guy and I'll just forget about the fact he will get paid 5 million a year. lol
Gotta give Wade credit on the Lindstrom acquisition. Only gave up a couple of crappy prospects for him.
Good assessment. I agree--"watchable". A big key will be each of those guys staying healthy. If Bourn/Berkman/Lee/Pence/Roy/Wandy/Myers/Norris go down, there's really zero depth to replace... true for many teams, but on this team, they need ALL those pieces to be watchable. One missing and it won't really work
Nothing helps a struggling team more than playing the Cubbies. Great series win. Hopefully they start to get on track from here on.
Lets not say that yet. You never know what might happen with the players given up, and 2 saves into Lindstrom's Astro career is way too early to make opinions on him. How long before people here start complaining about Sullivan? He is now 1 for 12.
Right off the top, Castro isn't coming up this season for signficant time. He's not close to ready. Buster Posey is an infinitely better catching prospect from the same draft class and he hasn't even cracked an offensively-starved SF roster. Look where our offense ranked last season: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2009-standard-batting.shtml Start by looking at how many runs we scored compared to the rest of the NL. We were 3rd worst and only 7 runs ahead of the team at the bottom. And we had Tejada over Manzella. And despite what people think, Berkman was still an elite hitter with an OPS over .900. He was far and away our best overall hitter, even in a down year by his standards. Yup, better than Lee and better than Pence the All-Star despite coming into the season with a bad shoulder and having the worst start to a season in his career. You could see from day one that his bat speed wasn't there. Even in the pits of his slump, though, he was still getting on base because of his plate discipline, unlike the rest of the hackers on this squad, other than Keppinger who is really just a situational hitter. Check out his career numbers against RHP: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=keppije01&year=Career&t=b We also got career years out of Bourn and Pence. Our offense has not improved this season. In all likelihood, it will be worse or just as bad. The only way I see us even matching last season's dismal offensive numbers is if Berkman comes back healthy and Towles can represent as much of an offensive improvement as his position as we lost going from Tejada to Manzella. It will be tough for Towles to do that. I'm also assuming that Lee, Pence and Bourn, collectively, match what they did last season, which is far from a given. For this team to win 60-something games in 2010, we will have to get unexpected production somewhere out of the backend of our rotation (3-5) and from our bullpen. But we won 74 games last season! Sure, but we also had the 4th worst run differential in the NL (-127), barely ahead of San Diego and Pittsburgh: http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings/_/year/2009 There is an extremely high correlation between run differential and wins and losses. What that tells us is that we actually got lucky to win 74 games. We played more like a 65 win team.
I'm not worried about Sullivan. Sure he's 1-12 but he's had some good Ab's and some good hits, just in the wrong spot. He is a reserve after all so their numbers tend to be lower with limited playing action and more pinch hitting. I'm just really happy that Berkman is coming back on Tuesday. Hopefully that'll get Lee and Pence back into gear and our Offense can finally start clicking. I really don't believe that were as bad as everyone makes us to be.
Good to see the Astros come into Wrigley and get 2. I really think this game has the potential to be more than just a win. I know it is one game, but they showed a lot of heart battling and coming back. They know they are deficient offensively until Berkman gets back. For them, to get a pinch hit double from Michaels, a solid outing from Moehler ( who hadnt pitched in over a week), and heads up defensive play shows that this team has some fight in them. Just a couple of days ago I was thinking that the Astros would lose 100 games. Now, with Berkman back and a week of solid quality starts by the entire rotation, I do not see why they cant be competitive. I am not going to get ahead of myself and think they could contend for a NL Wildcard, but they could end up playing .500 ball. We just need Pence and Lee to continue to start putting better swings on the ball. I was encouraged by the last two games for Lee. He really seems to be breaking out of his rut. It will only be a matter of time until he starts finding the holes and knocking some out of the park. The season is very young and no definite conclusions can be drawn, but it does appear that bonehead mistakes- ie- running themselves out of innings, bad positioning, kicking the ball around the infield, are behind them.
