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My lands, what a terrible, wonderful game the Astros played Saturday night in trouncing the Padres 11-6. Lance Berkman helped the Astros build and keep an early 7-1 lead with a homer and two great catches up against the LF scoreboard, but the club came within inches of blowing that whole lead because of a bullpen collapse in a five-run San Diego seventh after Jimy Williams took out the completely effective Jared Fernandez (2-3) when he finished six innings. Houston won as handily as it did only because the Padres' own bullpen cratered in a four-run Astros eighth that featured an RBI walk given to Billy Wagner and an ejection of the quirky Williams, who picks strange times to pull pitchers, make substitutions, and defend his players. The win, accomplished in some measure in spite of all that Williams did to mess it up, nevertheless bears his distinctive trademark of burning absolutely everyone there was to use, and it keeps the Astros (71-64) tied with the Cardinals atop the NL Central, with Chicago now a game and a half back. This one should have been easy for Houston. The Astros busted out to a 4-0 lead in the second inning, as Kevin Jarvis proved quite hittable. Lance Berkman walked and Richard Hidalgo muscled a single to CF. Morgan Ensberg walked to load the bases, and Brad Ausmus singled to LF for an RBI. After Adam Everett popped out, Fernandez rapped one back to the mound, with Jarvis going after the home to 1B double play. The front end of the deal was pulled off, but Miguel Ojeda's throw to 1B was errant, and that scored Ensberg and left the door open for more runs. Craig Biggio beat out an infield hit, plating Ausmus, and Jose Vizcaino, starting at 2B once again as Jeff Kent attends to his wife and new child in the hospital, hit like Kent in belting an RBI double to RF. Those four early runs were quite sufficient for Fernandez, whose knuckleball was something the Padres couldn't handle Saturday. Fernandez scattered five hits, walked only one and struck out two in his six innings. He was aided immensely by Berkman, who crashed into the scoreboard to haul down Mark Loretta's drive in the third inning, and who did it again in the fourth on Ojeda. As if that were not enough, Berkman added to the offensive totals with a majestic 440-foot homer to LCF in the bottom of the third. Houston went to work again in the sixth, knocking Jarvis out of the game by scoring two runs. Morgan Ensberg homered leading off, his twentieth of the season, and Brad Ausmus walked. After Joe Roa replaced Jarvis, pinch-hitter Mitch Meluskey, batting for Fernandez, walked. A Biggio grounder forced Meluskey, but Ausmus moved to 3B on the out, and he scored on a base hit to CF by Vizcaino. I'll grant two things at once: Last night, I said Fernandez needed to go six good innings. I also believe a 7-1 lead is a sufficient margin in most games and stadiums other than those games played in Coors Field. But I did not mean last night that Fernandez should be pulled after six regardless of how he is pitching. Any sensible person would have taken Fernandez's actual performance into account before making a decision. He had thrown 82 pitches and the Padres had hardly touched him. It made no sense whatsoever to take Fernandez out for a pinch-hitter in this one. If he had been laboring or if his knuckleball was exceptionally wild, yes, take him out, but neither of those tests were met, and I don't think Williams thought for one moment about either of those tests. I think he thought only in the way he's thought all year, about pushing the bullpen 'til it breaks. By taking Fernandez out, Williams not only burned Brad Lidge in a spot in which Lidge didn't have to be used, he nearly blew the entire game in a ridiculous, reflexive summoning of the overworked trio of Lidge, Dotel, and Wagner. Fernandez easily could have gotten the club to the eighth, leaving Dotel and maybe one other man to clean up, but Williams went to Lidge, and the Astros barely escaped the seventh with the lead after a nighmare rally by the Padres. Lidge hit Ojeda with a pitch and gave up a hit. Gary Matthews Jr. walked as a pinch-hitter, loading the bases. A Lidge wild pitch scored Ojeda, and Sean Burroughs, in that same at-bat, singled to LF for an RBI. One can say, I suppose, that Williams made the correct and logical move by doing as he's done all season long and going to Lidge for the seventh, but not tonight. It was dumb, it was stupid, and it was the kind of Wizard of Oz, "pay no attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the game on the field" kind of move that scares me to death if the Astros should be so lucky to make it to the NLDS. Even if the Astros should finally get then a solid game of hitting and a solid game of hitting--kinda like the game they had tonight, come to think of it--Williams will find a way to mess it up. Rather than let Fernandez go one more inning, it took four pitchers to get the Astros out of the seventh, all because Williams couldn't leave well enough alone. He thinks too much and he thinks not enough. The moves after the one to Lidge--to Dan Miceli, who gave up an RBI hit to Mark Loretta, got the dangerous Brian Giles to pop out, and surrendered another RBI hit to Phil Nevin; to Mike Gallo, who gave up a sacrifice fly to Ryan Klesko; and to Dotel, who struck out pinch-hitter Brian Buchanan--worked out well enough, but none of them should have been necessary. Neither should the now-inevitable move to Billy Wagner have been necessary in the top of the eighth. Dotel walked Ramon Vazquez with one out, and Wagner came in with two outs, along with Raul Chavez, yet another late-game move, at catcher, that made no sense. The Astros escaped, but not until after Wagner gave up a hit and hit a batter, loading the bases, and retired Giles on a short-hop grounder that Everett fielded and upon which he threw without setting his feet. If Jay Witasick had not completely lost his command in the bottom of the eighth, this one would have been close right down to the last out. But Witasick, following both Luther Hackman and K. Walker, did lose it. Geoff Blum had led off the inning with a single to CF and, one out later, Chavez forced him at 2B. Why Williams chose to argue that particular call at that particular time puzzles me. Yes, the game was close, but the play wasn't. The 2B umpire didn't ask for help because he didn't need it. But because he didn't ask, Williams went ballistic. Under normal circumstances, I'd be in Williams's corner on this one, but he did such a horrible job of managing his troops tonight, I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to his case. The fact is that it was Williams's fault that the game became as close as it was, and the only way I'd feel any sympathy for him is after discovering he got himself thrown out as an act of penance. Williams can pick some mighty odd times to go a-fightin'. This was one of 'em. I wish he'd go after more legitmate beefs--like when his pitcher is getting squeezed. One is not supposed to argue balls and strikes, but to get thrown out in such a spot is the very point of the exercise. His rescue of Jeff Kent in a Saturday afternoon game earlier this summer saved Houston's 2B from a much longer suspension, and that was a smart sacrifice on his part, but it's a measure of my dissatisfaction, my "Great Scott, I don't understand this man" bewilderment over Williams that often I can't even be happy when he's defending his players. His style and his game choices just don't please me; they make me uncomfortable (far more uncomfortable than I thought I'd be when he was hired) and as I look at the Astros now, I still don't see a team much better than last year's, and that's disappointing. If, however, you want to credit the Williams ejection with firing up the Astros, that's ok with me. I think, rather, the four-run uprising had more to to do with Witasick's wildness. After Bagwell was hit on the wrist with a pitch (I think he's ok), Witasick replaced Walker and gave up a huge two-RBI single to LF by Hidalgo and walks to Ensberg, Wagner and Everett to force in two runs more. Those runs pushed Houston's lead to a finally-safe 11-6 margin. Wagner, however, stayed in, earning his 37th save, not because of the work he did in the ninth but because he had already entered the game in the eighth in a save spot and preserved it. A win is a win, and I'll take it, but, dadgummit, even the save leaves me unhappy. Wagner should never have been put in the spot of having to pitch or to bat. Not tonight. Potentially, now, Wagner could be unavailable for Sunday afternoon. Maybe I should just go take an Excedrin and lie down, but maybe, too, we should pause for at least this long and consider the moves that were made by Houston Saturday. Those moves were the Williams way, but no other manager I know--not Dusty Baker or Joe Torre or Bobby Cox or Tony LaRussa--would have made so many of them, and thereby complicated what should have been such an easy game to win. This single win has a larger message within it, although to carp about a win, no matter how it's achieved, is rather like finding a cloud around a silver lining. If Williams cannot keep it simple down the stretch--let his pitchers pitch and his players play and watch the game before he makes his moves--then the Astros are going to be in trouble in October against the best minds in baseball, even if they enter the playoffs with a fully healthy club, a hot lineup and a stable rotation. Read the Astroday archives |