End product is all that matters. 19-9 was nice, better than 22-18. But whatever path the team travels to 90+ wins is fine by me.
I was starting to get worried that the Giants hadn't had their 5-6 run lead for awhile now. Ahhh... there's the 3-run HR... now all is right again.
Wow.....another run given up. How much worse can it get for the Astros. Wilson cannot even throw out the old man Finley.
Well of course they are, they are beating up on the Astros...... All of the sudden our pitchine SUCKS, and our hitting is just as bad.....WTF happened? DD
Its been a bad couple of weeks... but stop living and dying with every game. That is the reason why so many people wrote this team off the last couple of years, and why so many people jumped all over the bandwagon the first couple of weeks this year. If they can get three quality starts a week, and Lance is healthy, this team will be fine. As it is, Roy and Andy gave their quality starts this week... but the kids are pitching like... kids. Out of the three, Buchholz and Wandy were due for some sub-par outings (although it dind't have to be THAT bad), and Nieve still has a ways to go (and he's a 5th starter right now, at best). Clemens or Backe would be nice right now... but they have to get at least one of the three kids pitching better than they have the past two-three outings.
Just what I was thinking. Plus if you can get Clemens and Backe back then that takes a ton of pressure off the young guys and will boster the bullpen, all at once. And then baseball is all about matchups. For whatever reason, SF always gives us trouble. The Phillies were one win shy of the playoffs last year, yet didn't beat us once.
Just the nature of baseball - all teams go through stretches when they look better than they are and others where they look worse than anyone else. The White Sox had a 7 game losing streak last August and lost 6 out of 7 at one point in September - immediately after winning 7 in a row. It's just how baseball is.
I understand you lose some, but not 3-10 over the last 13, a good team usually avoids stretches like this, and this year is NOT last year, there are more teams competing for the WC, I think the Stros need to pick it up, as the cardiac kids style will not work this year, IMHO. DD
But of course... good teams should never have these sort of stretches... but it does in-fact happen every year. Its not desireable... but its not detrimental either. There's also something about knowing that these guys are used to winning, they've been there before, and they know how to turn it around if need be. That's a much better situation than Cincy, Colorado, Philadephia, or even New York can say... those guys just don't have the mettle yet that this team has developed by the last two seasons of playing in high-stakes games. Also, they're NOT 15-30... thus, they'll never need to do what they did last year again, meaning its not neccessary to say "this is not last year..."
Nick, I am more worried that Roger is sitting there going....."Aha, I knew there was still no offense" and decides to go pitch in Arlington. Definitly need big Puma, but Lane and Wilson are not going to cut it, we need Burke or move Berkman back to left and Lamb at first. We need more consistent offense. We have 4 easy outs...Lane, Wilson, Everett and the pitcher.....that ain't gonna cut it. DD
I pray Roger has more sense than to use just a 10 game sample-size... also, even he would realize that currently, the offense is NOT the problem (unless Lance is gone for the year)... in almost all of the games they've lost this year, its because of horrible starting pitching, or bullpen blowups. You can't expect to take a guy like Lance out, and expect anywhere close to the same sort of production. The guy is a TOP 5 hitter in this league... and he helps wear pitchers out enough so that lesser hitters will be able to take advantage of them later on. I agree... without Lance, this team is awful... but he will be back, and they'll score some runs. Also, if Roger goes to Arlington... it will be his own stupid decision... and I'm pretty sure he watched that team give up a 9 run lead yesterday to the Yankees. The Rangers are NOT going anywhere... and Arlington is a really apathetic market for baseball right now... if I was Roger's agent, it would take $6 million a month to even consider Roger to play there.
I was going to include him, but this year, not the case, if he falls back to his normal self we would have 55% easy outs, and that is TERRIBLE. DD
Happened to the NLCS Champion Astros last year (in a far worse way). Happened to the World Champion White Sox. Baseball is just a streaky sport.
I'd bet my life that Roger never plays for the Rangers. I'm pretty sure he meant the whole going to the rangers thing as a joke
i'd of cheered too, not like it matters. hell if giants fans cheered if biggio was hit, who cares? houston is bigger than san franciso, therefore, they count as 3/5's of a city.
