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.
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
28 responses to “The tale of two contests”
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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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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Thoughts:
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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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Not surprising
Houston Astros Rumors – MLB Trade Rumors
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Oops I meant to attach this
Astros Place Roddery Muñoz On Waivers – MLB Trade Rumors
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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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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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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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Sadly, brilliantly funny
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Funny how the season starts and we think the pitching is deep and the offense will have a slow start, and funny how it goes the exact opposite.
I wonder how much Isaac is really going to sit now. It may not matter if Altuve and Walker really are doing the improbable and beating back father time. I guess the disappointing part for me with Altuve is why did he spend all these years swinging at garbage if he really has been capable of laying off it this whole time?
Ryan Weiss just always seems to throw 2 or 3 great pitches, then either throws something completely uncompetitively out of the zone or catches too much of the zone. Just suspect command, but thats why he is a flyer.
AJ Blubaugh has a .150 BAA on balls in put in play between pitches 1 and 25. For pitches 26+ its .500. He has given up more hits in less than half the pitches thrown. Both the homeruns surrendered, pitches 26+. It’s early, so it is small sample – but counting last year stats – they are not as pronounced but still have a difference. Maybe the guy is just a one inning guy disguised as someone “stretched out.” I do know, like Simon, I’m frustrated with Joes use of guys and his desire to seem to want to get an extra out or two. I get it, Abreu lost the rubber game in Sacremento, but you can argue that it was Espada trying to get extra outs from Blubaugh in the 6th that really cost them the game.
I can’t remember the last time I thought “there is Javier.” It’s just turned into another bad contract. I used to be his biggest fan.
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Good morning,
Going back to Sunday for a minute, we pretty much gave back the game in the 5th. Lance could not give us more than 12 outs. Then we had some bad pitching. The big play not made though was the three run double hit to the track that Jake lost in the sun. I think if asked, he would have said he should have caught it.
Last night Pena inexplicably took a step to his right on a grounder a step to his left. If he makes that play, we’re out of the inning up 3-2 rather than down 8-3. Another game changing 5th.
It did not take me long to get back to my thinking that ours is a .500 club. We’ve got four guys with an OPS over 1.000. We’re hitting and scoring runs. But we also have the worst pitching in baseball. Of course all of this stuff is a short sample. Thing is, I don’t see our pitching getting better.
Dana Brown is already on the clock.
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I want to compliment Simon on his golf analogy. Likewise, I want to agree with you that this looks like a .500 team. However, they did try to claw their way back a couple times this weekend in eventual defeats. If they keep up those efforts and get a little luck here and there, it’s not unreasonable to think they’ll be a few games over .500 entering September. At that point the season could either follow last years or take a turn for the better. That last month doesn’t look awful except that we finish with 3 at Seattle and then 4 at Sacramento.
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Devin, the present .888 team OPS is not sustainable. They’ll need to keep hitting at a sustainable level and get better pitching. I’m just not sure where better pitching will come from.
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Just looking at the stats the Astros lead or within the top 3 spots in all hitting categories. Yet, they are on the bottom or close to it on almost al the pitching categories. As to the golf analogy it’s like I can drive the ball 300 yards and get close to the green but can’t chip or even make a two foot putt. I’m perplexed as to why we can’t beat teams that are not very good. Oh, an occasional hiccup but we’re pretty consistent at playing our worst baseball against the lower tier teams.
On a positive note the offense is awesome. Hope the can keep it up.
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Paredes in the lineup tonight…in the cleanup spot! Playing 3B…Correa sitting tonight.
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Well, the Astros drop tonight’s game as well. They are now at .500 once again.
Just as I was standing in line to buy a ticket to get on their bandwagon!! (joke)
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Good morning Sarge and everyone else at Chipalatta!
Obviously this could be a premature pronouncement just a dozen games in, but I think it’s going to be a tough year for the Astros.
We just don’t have enough good pitching. If Dana Brown gets this team to the post season he should get a five year deal. But if he makes it to the end of the season, I’ll be a bit surprised.
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Does Dana make the season? Good question. He owns this staff. Even the guys he didn’t bring, that were already here, he has been here long enough to have figured out how to move on. He is on the clock, watching his creation have a bad start.
So far, this staff has a 5.74 ERA, and has issued 61 walks in 105 innings. They’ve allowed 6 or more runs in half their games. Pitching wins. You want proof – this team is hitting .275 with a .379 OBP and team OPS of .851, which is higher than any player not named Yordan is capable of sustaining for a season. They’ve done this in 492 PAs, so far this team is one giant all-star. And it doesn’t matter, they are a .500 club.
Now, no way those things happen over large sample. They aren’t going to have a team OPS of .851 by June 1st. And they are not going to have a staff ERA of 5.74. The question is where does it settle? It’s a lot easier to win 4-2 games on the backs of good offensive performances from 1 or 2 people in a 9 man lineup then it is when a game despite the one guy that matters on the mound. Yordan can have a 0-4 with 3 K’s day and you still win; Imai gives up 6 runs in 4 innings, you probably lose.
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Dave, I’d like to be an optimist, but I believe there’s just a good a chance the team wins 75-80 games as it wins 89-90 (which I predicted). Too many holes, too many questions. Yes, if they end up at 89-90, you’d need to give Brown and Espada gold watches at the very least.
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Wonderful! (NOT!). Javier leaves due to shoulder tightness…Jake leaves with lower back tightness!
I thought we’d move on from 2025!
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Well let’s do the math here.
The Astros started the season with a 5 man rotation.
They’ve lost Hunter and if we see Javier anytime soon you can call me a fool – so we are down to a 4 man rotation.
Oh…..and the Astros were planning to start a 6 man rotation after the Colorado series.
So, that would take 3 more starting pitchers to do that.
And then we would need more to replace those pitchers as they one at a time fall victim to Astros starting pitching disease.
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!
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Should have said down to a 3 man rotation
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At least it was fun for those first 6 games. Time to look at rebuilding and forget about winning a division/wild card or what ever one can think of.
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We’ve all watched a lot of Astro baseball here. Can anyone piece together a solution that would have us in contention this summer?
I can’t.
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