The Pecan Park Eagle

Drs. Don Matlosz and Bill McCurdy at a 2011 reunion trip to UH. The two friends did their undergrad work at UH and their doctoral work at UT in the Texas Medical Center.

Before he turned professional in the mental health field and secured his long-term position as a tenured professor at Fresno State in California, my old friend Don Matlosz was a pretty darn good lefty school boy pitcher in New Jersey. The man knows his baseball and he has been an avid fan of the AAA Fresno Grizzlies club that now takes care of the Houston Astros farm club needs after years of service to the San Francisco Giants for as long as I can remember. Aware of the local Houston pull to bring up the young shortstop “phenom”, Carlos Correa, early to the big club, my wizened collegial buddy offered a few words of sense-making caution through a comment he made here today:

It doesn’t cost anything to listen to people with no personal agenda who know their baseball maturity and game mechanical details. – And it could be costly to both the Astros and Carlos Correa, if his call-up timing is mishandled. Here’s what Dr. Matlosz thinks – and his observations also cover another Astros farm hand and two of our current veteran MLB roster players:

“Your roving scout from Fresno went to his first Houston Astro AAA game on 05-23-15. I have been in mourning since the SF Giants left after 17 years of great baseball in Fresno. Singleton has shortened his stroke and therefore does not strike out as much. I think he is ready to return to the bigs. Dump Carter – too many k’s. – Correa struck out twice and had an infield single (in the game Matlosz watched). He looked over matched and had difficulties with off speed pitches. Lowrie is the answer when he returns from his injury. Keep Correa here.” – Dr. Don Matlosz, 5/25/2015.

My own thoughts, in spite of my longtime caring and respect for Don Matlosz, are simply to give the young man Correa a better look over quite a few games before we come to the conclusion that he will long remain “over matched” by AAA pitching this year. Maybe he will, but probably he won’t. As for Singleton, yes, bring him up, but hold off dumping Carter until we see how that change works out. I’d sooner drop Villar to make room for Singleton. Carter’s like a time-bomb, just waiting to happen. Let’s not give up on him now, simply because most of the early season fuses have failed to invite his explosiveness. If the Astros do ultimately decide to release Carter, we fans also are going to have to find a way to commit those vivid mental pictures of how far the fall goes when he does crunch it to the lost memory bank sector of our brains.