The Pecan Park Eagle

“We’d be happy to come back to Houston for a post-season visit some time, Astro fans, even if it won’t be this year. When we do, just be careful where you park your hopes!”

Saturday night’s 4-3 loss of a winnable game to Toronto due to quirky bounces of the ball, situational thinking errors on infield defensive play, and the second shaky pitching performance of the one guy we got in a deadline trade were hardly encouraging to our hopes for October, but, hey, Cool Hand Luke Gregerson did his job again and Tyler “Great” White supplied us some reason to hope that the challenges of rising to the occasion and our club’s ability to respond to the taste of blood in the water are still our allies. In White’s first time up, he hit his third home run in a row going back to the two he crunched his last two trips to the plate in Friday’s big Astros win. It wasn’t enough to save Saturday, but the delivery by White and another, even earlier bash by Josh Reddick still stood as current reminders of this team’s potential on offense at any time. After Liriano gave up the fatal fourth run to the Jays in the 9th on a sliding missed tag by catcher McCann after a dinker league hit, Cool Hand Luke came in to fan the next man and retire the side without further damage.

Two earlier Toronto runs scored on brain freezes. The first happened with men on first and third when rookie third baseman J.D. Davis came running in to grab a tapper to the left side. He looked briefly to second for a possible force out attempt and threw to first for the out. Had he thought about it earlier, he may have been ready to throw out the runner trying to score from third. He didn’t. And the run scored.

Another time, with a Blue Jay runner at third, White took a slow roller near the bag and threw home for a play by McCann at home. Instead of making the play, McCann just stepped on the plate and walked away, almost as though he thought he had a force out going on at home – which he did not. There was no tag attempt. And another run scored. Not sure what did happen there, but it wasn’t pretty.

When I coached 7-8 year old kid baseball about thirty years ago, we used to do regular infield drills called “What’s the situation?” As a coach, I hoped to teach the kids that they’ve got to stay up with their choices for throwing the ball based upon the game situation – and that they needed to have those best choices in mind before the next ball was hit or thrown to them. The kids learned it well enough to win our district championship.

After last night, I’m thinking. – Maybe the situation defensive drill is not something that only 7 and 8 year olds need.

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ASTRO*NOTES

Without even playing, Carlos Correa has now ascended to the #2 spot behind #1 hitter Jose Altuve in the AL batting average race.

As soon as Marwin Gonzalez qualifies with enough “AB”s in the next series, he, Josh Reddick, and George Springer could also be holding down the # 6,7, and 8 spots on the same list.

There still a lot of time for change, but one has to wonder: How long has it been since 5 of the top 8 hitters in the same big league were all teammates? It doesn’t ring any bells with me, but it sure seems like a possibility in 2017.

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AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST STANDINGS

THROUGH GAMES OF SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 2017 

AMERICAN LEAGUE WEST SCORES

GAMES OF SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 2017

 BLUE JAYS 4 – ASTROS 3.

 MARINERS @ ROYALS, ppd., rain.

 ATHLETICS 5 – ANGELS 0.

 RANGERS 4 – TWINS 1.

 AMERICAN LEAGUE BATTING AVERAGE

THROUGH GAMES OF SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 2017

NR * = NEEDS MORE “AB”S TO QUALIFY FOR RANKING.

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JJJJJJJJJJJJ

Tags: Astros Lose Winnable Game To Situational Errors

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