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It's only Spring Training, and what the Astros did to the Braves Tuesday afternoon in Kissimmee may be highly suspect in some circles, but it was still a sweet way to spend three hours on a sunny afternoon. Houston didn't bomb Atlanta with homers; rather, the club slashed hit after hit against them, looking somewhat at times like 40-odd fellows imitating that irritating tomahawk chop we see ad nauseum in the stands at Turner Field. The Astros cut and slashed their way to sixteen hits and broke the game wide open with an eight-run sixth inning against Ryan Glenn and a hapless Braves defense in a delightful 12-3 rout of Bobby Cox's boys. The win was Houston's third in a row, it pushed the club's record to 10-7-1 for ST, and it featured not only half a spring's worth of hits, but the second consecutive terrific outing by today's winning pitcher, Roger Clemens. So thorough and so lengthy was that sixth-inning eruption on offense that it felt like Clemens had actually done all his work the day before. Lest Clemens' day go unnoticed, let me say here that the Rocket was really sharp, going five innings and allowing only three hits. He walked no one and struck out six. On the whole, he was even more impressive than in his previous start, spotting the ball with greater ease and showing the Clemens velocity of old. This was the man the Astros hoped they'd see when they coaxed him out of retirement. Mike Hampton started against him and was up to his old tricks to some degree, but it's also true that Hampton started his team's bad day on defense. Houston broke through against him in the third when Clemens whacked a ball upon which Hampton threw wildly toward 1B and down the RF line, putting Clemens at 2B. Craig Biggio followed with a single to short CF, then Hampton messed up again, grabbing a topped roller toward 3B and attempting a back-hand, ball-in-glove flip to home to cut off the run. The gamble didn't work and the Astros had a run. A walk to Jeff Bagwell loaded the bases but, now on the ropes, Hampton reverted to more typical form and became the down-and-in pitcher we all remember. He got the grounder he needed from Jeff Kent, a 4-6-3 double play. A run did score, and under normal circumstances I'd be complaining about the Astros missing a great chance to rip the game open like a bag of Cracker Jacks, but the way Clemens was pitching, two runs were going to be enough, and they'd probably be enough in the regular season, too. Hampton thwarted another Houston scoring chance in the fourth by inducing another double play ball, but it was his uncharacteristically poor fielding--specifically, his throwing--that gave the Astros the breaks they needed. I'll leave it to you to decide how much stock to put into the work the Astros did in the sixth inning, but any metaphor you choose--a pounding, a blitzkrieg, a battering--they all fit. Bobby Cox left poor Ryan Glenn on the hill almost the whole way, and the young pitcher saw nothing go right. Houston sent thirteen men to the plate and collected eight hits. A walk to Berkman and an error at 1B--one of five errors the Braves made today--started it. Morgan Ensberg blooped a hit inside the line in RF. Brad Aumus got ahead in the count 3-0 but struck out and it looked like the frame would be fruitless. But Orlando Palmiero beat out a hit toward 1B, and a Biggio hit to RCF gave Houston a 4-0 lead. Another hit, by Adam Everett, made it 5-0, and Kent atoned for his earlier DP with a two-run single. Richard Hidalgo lifted a sacrifice fly to CF and, after Lance Berkman walked, Ensberg earned his second hit of the inning, a single to RF, for a 9-0 lead. Ausmus, in his second AB in the inning, slapped a hit into RCF for an RBI and a 10-0 lead. After yet another infield hit, Cox finally replaced Glenn with Tim Drew, who ended the inning and pitched a peaceful seventh, too. It was great to see the bats come alive for the second time in three games, although how much that hitting means against a pitcher who doesn't figure to make the Braves' staff is open to question. The Astros, however, especially Ensberg, will take hits wherever they can get them as March rolls along, and they'll hope for continued consistentcy the next two nights against the Mets and the Dodgers. One bit of good news happened so fast today you might have missed it. Ricky Stone had a very quick 1-2-3 sixth inning after his struggles in his last two games. Jared Fernandez wasn't so fortunate. Fernandez went two innings, but he was victimized by an Astro defense composed of bench players in the seventh and eighth. Atlanta scored a couple of runs in the seventh on two hits around a walk, followed by a fielder's choice grounder to SS and a sacrifice fly. In the eighth, two errors--at SS and at 3B--helped Atlanta add its final run. Toward the inning's end, Fernandez was kicking the dirt around the mound and he had a right to. Although this wasn't his best day with his command, since the wind was blowing in, what happened was not all his fault. He got the grounders he needed to get and threw the ball pretty well. If he is to make the club, someone will have to be bumped from the 40-man roster. Fernandez is doing all he can to force the Astros to make that very decision. The benchers redeemed themselves for their questionable fielding by putting two runs up on four hits in the eighth. RBI singles by two catchers batting back-to-back, Dax Norris and Brad Ausmus, did the job, and gave Brandon Backe loads of room to work in the ninth. He, too, made quick work of the Braves, getting a swinging strikeout, a grounder to 1B ad a comebacker to the mound, and he, too, is becoming more and more of a factor in how the Houston bullpen might be shaped by Opening Day. Backe's work restored some of the balance of the game's early innings after the roughness of the sixth and seventh, forming a bookend to Clemens's start, and reminding us that what remains noteworthy about Houston's spring thus far is the excellence of the club's pitching, for the most part. The two night games, Wednesday and Thursday, will be played in cooler temperatures, which increases the risk of pulled muscles and the like, so the Astros, blessed thus far with a camp remarkably free of injuries, will have to be careful. The Mets beat Houston earlier this month at Port St. Lucie and the Dodgers will still have Sunday's wild game fresh on their minds when Thursday gets here. It will serve the Astros well, then, to treat these two games with a good deal of respect and as useful preparation for what the opening month of the season is going to be like.
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