aka: The official Astros frustration thread no hitting + no pitching = not winning. I know its still realtively early in the season, but they will have to start sweeping some series in order to be able to make up for their 6 and 7 game losing streaks they have been having. Prediction: The Astros will finish 3rd and not make the playoffs this year.
Encouraging news: 1. The play of Lugo 2. Solid starting pitching as a whole 3. Berkman's HR numbers Discouraging news: 1. Most everything else With the exception of Stone, Mlicki and Lugo, I find it hard to think of a single player who is performing above expectations, although based on May performance, Redding should be added to the list. While Oswalt and Hernandez have pitched well (for the most part), I think they are performing as expected. Had they had a few more runs to work with and weren't seemingly always pitching under pressure, their stats would undoubtedly be better. In order to win, teams need most of their players to perform as expected with a few key folks having unexpectedly good years and 1 or 2 players need to come in from out of the blue (e.g. Oswalt in 2001) to perform well. Although good things were expected from Oswalt, had the team been playing well last year, his call up would have been delayed.
If you had told me that our starters would be performing this well top to bottom, I would have thought that we'd be up 6 games. I expected Hernandez and Oswalt to be excellent, but they've been even better. Mlicki was solid, and Redding has put together a few quality starts in a row. But I never ever thought our hitting would be this pathetic and consistently fail to produce in the clutch. The bullpen has been a disappointment, but it looked shaky on paper before the season started. I haven't been this disappointed with an Astro team during the regular season since 1987. At least in 2000, we were banged up. What makes this year so scary is that it's our thoroughbreds that aren't producing...
The team is boring the hell out of me but Lugo sure is playing well. He doesn't seem to be trying to hit everything out of the park on every swing anymore and he's not getting the yips in the field like he used to. A big time surprise... for me anyway. I hope he keeps it up once everyone starts bashing.
