The tale of two contests

First of all, I would like to wish everyone and their families a wonderful Easter Day!

There were a number of questions that the fans hoped would be answered with the Astros first road series of the season:

  • Would the team which in its best years was a very good road team and which in 2025 was a very mediocre team (41-40) improve this season away from Daikin Park?
  • Would the team that showed so much unexpected offense during their 5-game winning streak continue that trend?
  • Would Lance McCullers Jr. show that his excellent first start was not a fluke?
  • But two questions were tied for first. Would Cristian Javier improve upon his very poor first start? Would Tatsuya Imai show improvement from his first start and show the wizardry that drove the Astros to sign him this off-season.

And the first two games of the road trip, which featured Javier and Imai gave very different, almost polar opposite results on that last bullet point.

Friday Night Fright

  • The Friday night game fell quickly into a blowout as Javier went 3.2 innings allowing six hits and (wow) five walks resulting in six runs. To be fair, that should have been four runs allowed as Javier should have gotten out of the fourth inning without allowing a run, but Yainer Diaz could not corral a popup (and nobody, including Javier) got there to help him out. This allowed the fifth run to score and knocked Javier out of the game. (To be unfair, if Javier did not walk the first two batters of the inning, he would have been OK, also).
  • Roddery Munoz took over from Javier down 5-1 and after allowing a walk, single, home run, and home run the score was 10-1 and the game was over.
  • The Astros offense with Isaac Paredes on the bereavement list seemed to be mourning his absence. After scoring one run early on a Yordan Alvarez sac fly, they threw in a handful of runs after the game was decided to make the final score 11-4.
  • The one bright spot on the pitching side was Ryan Weiss, who threw three scoreless innings with 2 Ks and no walks to save Joe Espada from plunging deep into the bullpen.

Saturday Revenge

  • Lots of good things happened in the Astros 11-0 demolition of the A’s of West Sacramento. But the best thing that happened was a beautiful outing by Imai. While the Astros gave him stress relief with lots of scoring, Imai went 5.2 innings of shutout ball, allowing only three hits against nine Ks. He did allow 3 walks, but two of them were to his last two batters when he looked a little gassed. Imai looked great and his “which way is it going” slider looks like a death pitch for the opposition.
  • Rarely does an offense strand 17 runners and easily win a game. But the Astros had 13 walks and 18 hits and scored plenty of runs on Saturday.
  • Christian Walker, Joey Loperfido, Yainer Diaz (playing DH) and Christian Vazquez all had 3 hits and 2 RBIs apiece and 4 walks among them to lead the offense.
  • Kai-Wei Teng had another good outing with 2.1 innings of shutout ball and Steven Okert threw a scoreless ninth to finish off the A’s.

The Astros head into the Sunday game at 6-3 and are a game and a half up on the Texas Rangers in the AL West.  

Sunday’s big question may be answered by McCullers.  And I know. Yes, it’s early. YIE.

And, a quick note as I was preparing to post this. Hunter Brown hit the 15-day IL today with a right shoulder strain. It’s retroactive to April 2. Obviously, someone will need to step up. Christian Roa will replace him on the roster…for now.

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12 responses to “The tale of two contests”

  1. Well Bryan Abreu gives up a 3 run home run to give the A’s a series win. A 27.00 ERA. Time for a new closer. 4 for 15 with RISP. This series was an all or nothing for the Stros. On to Denver for hopefully a better result.

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    • Yes about Abreu. He has no business pitching in a close game.

      Also, when a team scores TEN RUNS, they SHOULD win. The pitching staff is in tatters.

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      • Hi Sarge, Good point on the Astros scoring ten and losing. I did not read your post before being redundant.

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  2. A bit of a sobering day. Nothing remarkable except that our ace has a right shoulder strain. We’re pretty much looking at 4 to 8 weeks minimum with Hunter. That’s best case. We all know what it too often means. Someone said today that Brown threw the most pitches of any starter in the first start of their 2026 season.

    But having Lance regress back to Lance today is problematic. He gave us 12 outs. Javier is problematic. We might see Colton Gordon sooner than I had hoped. Suddenly our 13 look far from bullet proof.

    Brian Abreu is our closer by default. He did get the fastball up to 98 today, but again had no idea where it was going. And Joe went right back to him trying to get a 6 out save. He obviously wanted the series. I thought we learned the hard way last year when Hader got shut down. Right now, I would elect to go with pitchers that match up well in the ninth, at least until Abreu figures out what I hope are mechanical issues.

    But the game turned in a stinker because not many guys on the newly assembled pitching staff really had it today. We scored 10 and lost.

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    • Well, at least the bats showed some life, but I hesitate to put too much faith behind a performance in a park no major league team should step foot inside. Regardless, that was something we lacked in 2025. There were too many games I wrote off after falling behind early. The staff is certainly not looking like a strength of the team, but they are sitting in first place in the division after 10 games and maybe there will be enough fight and effort to keep them there.

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  3. Thoughts:

    • The Astros two biggest problems are intertwined and worsening. Depth their starters go. Depth of the bullpen – especially the back end/overuse. With Hunter out and with McCullers falling back into old habits, with Burrows not going deep enough, with Javier not back and with us hoping that Imai’s second start is the real him – we are going to be grinding the bullpen. Joe has been having to use relievers for multiple innings almost all the time and it is starting to come back at him.
    • On the radio they said Framber has pitched 12 innings in his two starts and has given up 2 runs total. Just saying.
    • So bizarre how badly the team started out last season hitting and how good they are this season. They are leading the majors in runs/game at 7.00/game – 2nd with a .282 BA – but way ahead of everyone with a .396 OBP which is driving a MLB best .880 OPS. Last season – no one player had an OPS of .880 or better (Pena led with a .840 mark). Their patience is driving the offense. They are averaging more than 6 walks per game – no other team is averaging 5 per game.
    • I heard a fan complaining on their defense – costing them games. Hey, they seemed to have problems with some of these pop-ups but they weren’t alone. In general their fielding has been very good.
    • Well – they are a half game up on a team I expected to be in last place. Can they play decent while waiting on Hunter and Hader and Sousa and even on the short term – Paredes? On to the thin air of Colorado.

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  4. Well guys, here we are less than a month into the season and, already, there are cracks in the dam.

    Looking at it from another perspective, if Paredes has a decent couple of months, all the more reason that Houston will pull the trigger to move him for starting pitching…unfortunately.

    If this season goes south in a hurry, I’d lean more to hanging onto him to build around with Pena and Smith…but that’s me…and I don’t know much.

    And the Saints, I mean, the Astros, seem to not want to take the “rebuild” course, so we’ll likely see more short-term, aging talent added at the break.

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  6. From our good buddy Chip

    Paredes is back – Whitcomb is being sent back down

    Enyel De Los Santos is off the IL taking the place of Munoz who was released

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  7. is it just me that despairs at Joe Espada’s handling of pitching? He seems to have no feel at all. It’s like golf. I bet he’s not a very good golfer. The starting pitching is like the tee shots – straight forward if you have planned well. The hitters are like the iron shots. You need to adapt but you know what each one should do. The bullpen is like the short game. It’s all finesse and feel. Depends on the lie, whether there are obstructions, what the grass is like, how you are feeling each club on the day. I bet Joe uses a 56 all the time, no matter what the situation. He’s like that with the bullpen. No touch or feel or intuition based off how it’s going today and how you see the lie of the land. It’s all just ‘the book says this’. Closer in the ninth no matter what. Ugh.

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  8. In other news, apparently the crew of Artemis 2 have seen the home run ball of Albert Pujols from Brad Lidge orbiting the moon ….

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