Recap - Game 5, Houston @ St. Louis

An 11-2 loss in which, just when we were thinking that Pujols was a good guy, he went and did that. In the live blog yesterday, which I'm this close to retiring from after the OD Cubs loss and then that mess yesterday, Citizen Seth said after the first inning that leaving runners on 2nd and 3rd would come back to haunt us. I agreed, and then I agreed again after doing the same thing in the 2nd inning. And then leaving runners on 1st and 2nd in the 3rd. Coop can talk about not "getting the big hit" all he wants, but even a small hit would have helped. Wainwright was clearly struggling, and the Astros couldn't taken advantage. I believe the only time the Astros have led a game this season was in the 10th inning of G2 vs the Cubs.

Astros pitchers yesterday:
Oswalt: 6IP, 9H, 6ER, 4K/2BB
Wright: 1IP, 7H, 4ER, 1K
LaHawk: 1IP, 3H, 1ER, 1K

Pitcher	Pit/Str	Strike%	Batters Faced/Outs	Efficiency%	GB/FB/K
Oswalt	89/59	66.3%	27/18	66.7%	9/4/4
Wright	28/17	60.7%	9/3	33.3%	2/0/1
LaHawk	26/16	61.5%	6/3	50%	2/0/1

Something I did promise we would look at was how poorly Roy fared against Molina-Thurston-Ryan, so how bad was it?: 5x7 with a sacrifice and two runs scored. 6x8 if you count the pinch-hitter Freese's AB.

Coop looked like he was going to leave Wright in all day if he had to - and who's going to blame him? No use burning your bullpen in a blowout. Wright was brought in specifically to face lefties, and he let six baserunners reach before recording his first out - including three lefties.

Matsui took himself off the basepath trying to steal on Molina, when if he just would have stayed put, it's a 1-0 game at the very least.

Offensively, we've already mentioned The Leaving of the Baserunners. But let's look at Wainwright's day just to get an idea of how shaky he was (admittedly, though, he got his crap together in the 4th and 5th - and with two outs in all innings)

Pitcher	Pit/Str	Strike%	Batters Faced/Outs	Efficiency%	GB/FB/K
Wainwright	102/61	59.8%	21/15	71.4%	8/2/4

Groundballs are killing this team. The Astros were 1x8 with RISP, and it wasn't until Bourn's triple in the 9th that they got their first extra-base hit. Pence got on base twice with two hits, while Berkman drew two walks.

Man of the Match:
Hard to say. No one stood out. Michael Bourn. On base twice, had the only extra-base hit, and in his 4ABs saw 26 pitches.

Goat of the Game:
It's easy to pin this on Roy, or Wesley Wright. But Roy had no help from the offense, and Wright came into an unwinnable game, anyway. Goat goes to Miguel Tejada:
0x4, 2Ks, 6LOB