Where's the beef?

Hard drive crash last night – sorry for the delay posting. 

Evidently the Astros closed door meeting after Monday’s game helped because they rocked Ohlendorf yesterday.  Even though the end result was just eight hits and four runs, it could have been sixteen hits and eight runs just as easy because even the outs were crushed off him.  Yet, without two errors (no calls), the Astros would have only scored two runs.

Bourn led off the game with a four-pitch walk and then Tejada bounced a slow roller down the third base line that Andy LaRoche was slow to and, even though he made a nice play on it and threw a rocket to his bro at first, Adam didn’t stretch out for the throw and Tejada was called safe in a bang-bang play.  He should have been out if we weren’t going through the motions.  Berkman then hammered a line drive to Morgan in left that he was quick to and that loaded the bases.  Lee drove a hanging sinker to the fence in left missing a granny by about ten feet but good enough to bring in Bourne and all the other runners to advance a base, and then Pence hit a fly ball to McLouth that he dang near misplayed but handled allowing another run to score.

In the second Rodriguez absolutely crushed a line drive at LaRoche at third he picked about a foot off the ground, Kepplinger hammered a line drive straight at Morgan who broke in a few feet, then back and the ball went over his head for a double (those kind of plays should be called errors), and Hampton came up and put the first rather easy ball in play that went to Andy LaRoche who gloved it and threw low to Adam who had to take it off the dirt for the out.  In Hampton’s at bat, Ohlendorf bounced one in front of Doumit who attempted to block it but didn’t, the ball went through his legs headed for the backstop but he got lucky in that it hit off the heel of his foot and bounced back in front of him which froze Kepplinger, or he would have moved up to third.  Thankfully, Braun struckout to end the threat.

The third was much the same — it opened with Tejada smoking one down to LaRoche at third that went off his glove into left for a single (a ball he has to make a play on), Berkman then just missed a home run to right with his double high off the chain fence wall that moved Tejada to third, and then Lee hammered lined one off the left field wall bringing them both home. 

Kerrigan must have finally figured out Ohlendorf wasn’t staying in long enough thereby leaving his fastball and all his offspeed pitches hanging up in the zone, so he walked out to give his tweak and then walked back and the net result was three straight groundballs, one that had eyes but the third that went for a double play.  Same thing in the fourth, a 1-2-3 inning. 

The fifth opened with Ohlendorf back up in the zone - Tejada hit a line drive to right center McLouth left his feet for (why, I have no idea because he was fifteen or twenty feet from the ball running a side-to-side route instead of going back to cut the ball off), the ball ran to the wall, and Tejada ended up with a double.  Berkman hit a sharp grounder to Sanchez that he booted and then recovered on to get him, and then more weirdness – Lee’s second strike was so high and outside Doumit had to extend his glove hand up and away for but home plate ump James Hoye, after a solid second to a second and one-half delay, called the pitch a strike and Lee became irate and walked off.  Ohlendorf bounced the next pitch to the plate with Lee swinging in desperation and struck out.  Very strange at bat.. very strange.  The inning ended when Pence made an out.

The rest of the game was more of the same - balls in play off our relievers were mostly hammered but went for outs.  Despite not having the best day in left, Morgan did lay out making a nice catch in the 9th on Rodriguez’s line drive that was tailing away from him.  I suspect that will be on a highlight reel somewhere.

Hampton pitched a nice game as I suspected he would against us.  We had opportunities but no clutch.  I suspect today’s game will be more of the same.  Chock this loss up to Ohlendorf’s poor mechanics coming out of the pen to open and adjusting too late, and no bats.

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Monroe had a single in the game but he also had a couple of ugly at bats.  The last one got me – he took two pitches down the heart of the plate belt high and then had to put a slider away in play which he ground into a double play.  Where’s Moss?

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Jack Wilson was a late scratch with an index finger problem and not because it was drizzling with a 43 degree temp.

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Andy LaRoche was spelled by Vasquez in a double switch when Chavez came in.  Unless the young man is hurt, which certainly didn’t look the case, then I just don’t get the benching in favor of the aging, overpriced, veteran player even with LaRoche playing poor. 

Let him play, let him play, let him play. 

Wins are not important – getting good looks are so we can start to think about wins next year.  Remember Ramirez that we all boo’d so bad when he came up and booted everything?  We’ve got the exact same thing going on now expect LaRoche isn’t gettng consecutive innings like Ramirez got. 

Let him play – we’ll suck it up as fans. 

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Speaking of no bats, the Pirates have scored 29% of all runs this year (10 of 35) in the 9th inning — four of them were comeback runs against Motte in St. Louis and the rest scored in games one team had in control - five against Lincoln and the Reds and one against Velverde yesterday (LaRoche’s home run).  Also, of the 71 innings played so far we’ve scored at least one run in 16, and more than one run in 60% of those (9 of 16).  That means we’ve been blanked in 55 of the 71 innings. 

Ironically, every other game we are getting shut down — just two runs in those last three games (opposing ERA of 0.67) and five runs in those last four (opposing ERA of 1.25).  The rest of the time we are mauling some pretty suspect pitching (opposing ERA of 7.71). 

So if that keeps up we should end the year at around .500, right?  Don’t hold your breath. 

Oh, and after we torched Moehler the other day for five or six runs, he was put on the DL.

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Man, do we have a pitching depth problem in our system.

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