I am worried about Valverde. He is our best relief pitcher by far. As nice as Keppinger has looked, they were only planning on using him situationally. And it's not just who but the number of injuries because... A. We don't have any sort of depth in our system. B. We may end up using other pitchers and position players more than planned, leading to other injuries and less depth off the bench. I was one of the bigger critics around here of the Moehler signing last year and he started out poorly this season but on a team with few replacement options, any injury to a pitcher is a serious issue. Given that the majority of our starters aren't the type that tend to make it to the 6th and 7th innings consistently, we need a deep and healthy bullpen. And even if many of our pitchers are subpar, the replacements coming up may be even worse. Basically, I hope this rash of injuries is just a fluke because we can hardly afford to lose able bodies.
It looks like Valverde is available today. Smith getting the start over Keppinger, who hurt his back sliding into 3rd in the last game. Matsui was warming up today but he's not playing. Apparently, Keppinger is in worse shape than Matsui. The Astros are down to 4 healthy infielders. During pregame, Cooper was talking about the possibility of using guys like Pudge, Bourn, Erstad and Michaels in the infield.
It wasnt a bad pitch, the guy sorta put a defensive swing on it and was fortunate enough for it to leave the ball park.
We also had 7 walks and a bases loaded situation with Lee up. Roy worked his ass off tonight and did everything he could to get us a win. He battled out of jams, didn't get much rest between innings for the most part and even scored our only run after a 2 out walk with no men on against Cueto earlier in the same inning. Valverde blew the save. Roy battled hard and pitched big in clutch situations. The offense was anemic and unclutch. Another game tomorrow...
YAY Reds! Now we are over .500! I didn't think we were ever going to get a run in... how many fraking runners did we lob! At least now it won't be a sweep!
this is an Astros subforum.. and they just lost a game that was a win till the last two outs of the 9th.. vamoose..............
