MVN - Most Valuable Network

Slugger Brad Ausmus Cements Astros Victory Over Giants With Mighty 2 Run Blast

OK, so I exaggerated jusssssst a little bit. But not much because his homer traveled about 20′ further than Aaron Rowand’s. Besides, Brad is now up to 77 homers. Well, for his career, but if you’ve been a baseball player for 16 years and you have a grand total of 77 of em, hey, each one NEEDS to be celebrated.

Lance hit another 400 something feet homer last night right handed. I don’t guess turning him around is really going to do the trick this year. And here is what Roy Oswalt, who seldom has much to say, said about Lance:

“Another key to our recent success has been Lance Berkman. He’s really hot right now. He’s been a great hitter for a long time, and it’s largely gone unnoticed. It seems like he comes up big every year, and, even last year, when they say he had a down year, he still hit 30 home runs and drove in 100 runs.

If Lance had the career he has had so far in a larger market, his name would be all over the place. If he ever hit like this in New York or Boston, he would be the next president.”

grinning

Lance is FAR too honest to ever be any sort of politician. Oh yeah - and last year he somehow drove in 100 runs with a guy with a sub-.280 OBP leading off, and a combined .320 OBP from all other 2-hole hitters.

Anyway, I hate these late night starts and am really REALLY glad that the west coast games are now over. But I love the fact that the (home team) broadcasts are available for free on MLB-tv immediately after the game is over, so that if I forget to record the game or am too asleep to get up in the middle of the night to watch the rebroadcast on Fox, I can STILL check out the game, even if it is a tiny picture on the computer. And it is interesting, by the way, to listen to the opposing broadcasters talk about Lance - THEY respect him even though the national sports broadcasters and the supposed baseball “experts” don’t.

Oh yeah - I had to REALLY laugh at the San Fran broadcasters describe a 79 degree game time as “hot.” Those guys don’t know what “hot” is.

In the second inning, Moehler looked awful - single, homer, single, single, FC, ROE scoring a run because Ausmus didn’t catch the soft toss from Moehler. Moehler got the error - but it should have been on Ausmus - and Bowker, the runner, would certainly have been a dead duck at the plate. And that is the second glaring error I have seen Brad make this week - he never used to miss easy catches and he almost never had passed balls. But, hey, what can I say, defense doesn’t matter, does it?

Oh yeah - props to Carlos Lee, who doesn’t exactly hustle, for getting to Ray Durham grounder and making an accurate throw to Matsui to nab Ray trying to hustle in for a double. That was kind of dumb of Ray because these days, he runs about as well as Clank does…

Anyway, after the second inning, both Misch, who went 6 innings, and Moehler, who went 5, settled down and they scattered a few more hits, but there was no action until the Giants bullpen gave it up. And, by the way, Coop was right not to send Moehler back out for a 6th inning - at the end he was giving up 400′ fly ball outs and when hitters are hitting balls 400′, you have to be lucky when they don’t go for extra bases…

Byrdak darn near gave up a homer to Jose Castillo so it went for a double, and with 2 out, 2 on, Coop sent Oscar Villareal in to get out righty Dan Ortmeier, and he got the job done.

Coop did the Phil lefty-righty thing in the 7th with Wright and Geary, then send in Brocail in the 8th and Valverde in the 9th. 

And has anyone else noticed that Lance is getting Barry’d if he’s up, first is open and runners are on?

And speaking of Barry, MLB is doing this promo showing the 600 HR hitters hitting # 600, then showing Junior Griffey, who is 2 away. No Barry. Then then show a promo with 500 HR hitters hitting # 500, then Manny Ramirez, who is 2 away. No Barry. Guess they have to pretend he never existed. This is reminding me of Bowie Kuhn always being too busy/having meetings/whatever to pay attention to Hank Aaron hitting #700, approaching the record - they were hoping he would just like go away. But what happened, happened and it is stupid and cowardly to pretend it didn’t or insist that only one person bears responsibility for the entire steroid era…

And, by the way, it sure looks odd to see Phone Booth half empty. Wonder why it is????

This afternoon, it’s Chris Sampson vs Tim Lincecum. Last week, I called Chris’ start vs Derek Lowe - Sampson vs Goliath.

Lincecome is the little righty (6′ my foot - he’s Wesley Wright size) who definitely can.

He’s had 7 starts this year, all quality, meaning he’s lasted at least 6 innings every time - although I must note that he gave up 4 unearned runs against Philly in one start…

Over 50.1 IP, he’s given up 45 H, 3 HR, 18 BB, 53 K - 1.61 ERA, 1.25 WHIP and a .243 BAA.

And Miguel Tejada is not going to play today, which means that Loretta will be at short and Geoff Blum at third (Wiggy’s side is still hurting from being HBP a couple days back) so Sampson is going to have his work cut out for him on both offense AND defense. It is gonna be very hard for him to win, even if he only gives up a few runs…

Sampson has faced the Giants twice, and no one has more than 6 AB against him, but everyone has at least 1 hit except for Vizquel and Castillo.

Lincecum has also faced the Astros twice, and scattered a few hits. He has awesome stuff, including a snapping FB that he throws 95-97 MPH - so much for only large males can throw hard, hunh?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Astros baseball, Brad Ausmus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.