It was a sweetly ironic Thursday night in the City by the Bay. The lowly Astros rode the arm of Henry Sosa, a former Giants prospect that came over in the Jeff Keppinger trade, and beat the defending champs in San Francisco 3-1.
In typical Astros fashion, after taking 2 of 3 from the Gigantes just last week, the club got handily swept in Colorado, a series that was filled with lots of AAA stuff, like Wesley Wright playing the outfield and Aneury Rodriguez giving up the walk-off...run...on a wild pitch. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly confident that the 'Stros would come out swinging in this one, but behind Sosa's masterful first major league win, they eked out just enough runs to secure the victory.
Sosa's performance can't really be overstated here. While it's true that he allowed the leadoff hitter on in five consecutive frames, the dude was pitching on three days rest. Walks are gonna happen. What didn't happen for the Giants was hits, as Sosa only gave up four of them--all singles. He rode his fastball and excellent slider for the entire night, locking hitters up and sawing left-handed bats off. Indeed, his final line of 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 3 SO is superb, particularly for a younger guy pitching against his former team on three days rest. Sheesh.
The Astros' bats were terrible (1-12) with RISP, but J.D. Martinez and newcomer Jordan Schafer were able to carry the load offensively. Martinez doubled Schafer in for the first run of the game in the first, and later scored him again with a sacrifice fly in the third. Schafer completed the Astros' scoring with a line drive homer to right, just his second dinger of the season. I'll tell ya, I wasn't exactly high on Schafer when he came over in the Michael Bourn trade, but I'm starting to think that's mostly because we were trading Michael Bourn. For similar reasons, I think I'm resisting liking Schafer because...he's not Michael Bourn. But the guy is quite fast, he plays decent center field, and he apparently can hit a little too. If Mills (or whoever's managing in 2012) plans on keeping him in the leadoff spot, all that's there to worry about is a nice OBP. Schafer's career number is .313, but ya know, there's always hope.
A win's a win, so I'll take it. Happless throws tonight against Madison Bumgarner at 9:15 Houston time. Any predictions on how many runs he'll give up?
No comments:
Post a Comment