Why They Lost
It's the Astros' second disaster start in a row. Bud Norris allowed eight baserunners in 4IP, and threw a wild pitch. Seven of his 12 outs were strikeouts, but he walked three and gave up five hits, throwing 94 pitches to get those 12 outs. And the Astros as a team hit .100 (3x30) with Matsui's double coming as the lone extra-base hit. Just as a note of clarification: Brad Mills in no way is responsible for this.
Astros Pitching
| Name | IP | H/ER | K:BB | Pit-Str | CS/SS |
| Norris | 4 | 5/4 | 7:3 | 194-57 (60.6%) | 15/16 |
| Chacin | 2 | 3/0 | 1:1 | 33-22 (66.7%) | 9/1 |
| Sampson | 1 | 0/0 | 1:0 | 14-9 (64.3%) | 2/2 |
| Lopez | 1 | 2/2 | 0:0 | 29-19 (65.5%) | 7/2 |
| Fulchino | 1 | 1/0 | 2:0 | 21-15 (71.4%) | 3/3 |
Jeebus, Norris. Norris has given up 32 hits this year, and 22ER. Of course, by walking 20 batters in 26.1IP, it doesn't take too many hits to score a run. He's averaging 93 pitches per start, but is only average 4.1IP per start. That's bad. He threw a first pitch strike to 12 of the 21 batters he faced, and ran it to a three-ball count seven times. In fact, after three pitches, he was only in front of nine of 21 batters.
Starting pitchers are 5-18 for the Astros this season, while the bullpen is 4-2. SPs are allowing a line of .282/.356/.422, relievers are allowing .258/.308/.407.
And this is crazy, too. 2-hole batters are hitting .395/.438/.479 against Astro pitching. 3-hole batters are hitting .207/.287/.397.
Anyway, this is just ridiculous.
Astros hitting
Also ridiculous is the offense. We can talk about trading Berkman all we want, but the fact remains that he's 34-year old first baseman with a knee injury hitting .185, after last night's 0x3 performance. After Bourn's 0x4 night, he's hitting .300 - and he's the only hitter in the starting lineup hitting higher than .235, which is the next highest batting average, and belongs to Pedro Feliz.
The Astros had one AB w/RISP, when Matsui hit a double, and then Carlos Lee didn't do anything with it.
Pitch Count Hero: Manzella (0x3) - 18 pitches in three PAs
Pitch Count Punk: Bourn (0x4), Michaels (0x3), and Feliz (1x3) - 11 pitches in three PAs
Man of the Match: Jeez. Let's give it to Gustavo Chacin, who made his first major league appearance since April 28, 2007, and held the Padres to three hits in 2IP.
Goat of the Game: So many to choose from. Bud Norris. I know the offense has been poor, to understate things, but Norris has made six starts, and the Astros have been ahead in just one game that he left. I'm working on a new idea here (maybe), but the Astros have a -18 run differential in his appearances (Meaning that, when he left the game, the Astros have been ahead by one run once, and down 17 runs in the other five appearances).
