The Peacock did not fly yesterday and Houston dropped a third straight to the Sox at Fenway. A promising start quickly went up in smoke as a 2-0 lead became a 5-2 deficit that the Astros just never recovered from. Some more thoughts on the loss:
1) Brad Peacock once again struggled to hit his spots, watching his pitch count spiral out of control and failing to get through the 4th inning. When the dust cleared, Boston had drawn 5 walks off of Peacock, 4 of them in the second inning, and the kid's ERA had jumped to 8.44. Peacock has made it through 5 innings just once this year, and it's largely due to his inability to put hitters away early in the count. You can't keep running counts full on every hitter and expecting to pitch deep into games. It's starting to raise questions as to whether or not Peacock projects to be a rotation guy, or someone destined to pitch out of the bullpen. I still think it's too early to make that call, but if he goes another 4-5 starts and things don't start to get better, I think you have to consider making a change.
2) Jose Veras was sharp once again extending his scoreless streak to 5 innings following his blown save against the Angels. He's actually lowered his ERA down to a respectable 4.66 and he's taken a leadership role out in the bullpen which is good to see. Now we just have to figure out how to get him some leads to protect.
3) Houston hitters drew 7 walks, but struck out 12 times and were just 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position. That makes them 1 for 24 with runners in scoring position over the past two games. Hard to win a lot of games that way. While it's impressive that we've been scoring runs without the benefit of hits (bases loaded walk, rbi groundout, sac fly), the Astros have to do better with runners in scoring position. But that shouldn't come as a surprise seeing as it's been our achilles heel for a couple years now. Not sure what the answer is other than that someone needs to step up.
4) Chris Carter struck out 4 times yesterday, including once with the tying run on first in the 7th inning. Carter now has 43 strikeouts in 24 games, but this marked the first time that he'd fanned four times in a game this year. In case you're keeping track, Carter is now on pace to strike out 290 times. And yes, that'd be a record. I realize he's tied for the team lead in rbis and he's second on the team with 12 runs scored, but can you really keep hitting him in the 3-4-5-6 spots in the order when he's hitting .216 and striking out in practically 50% of his ABs? Would it be so bad to trot out OBP machine Brandon Barnes, Fernando Martinez and Robbie Grossman as our starting outfield for a while?
5) Wesley Wright was bailed out by a line drive double play, but he now hasn't been scored on in 5 straight outings spanning 6 2/3 innings. His ERA has dropped down to 3.00 and he hasn't allowed a home run in 12 innings this season.
6) Two more hits for Marwin Gonzalez last night (two of our FIVE hits) as our 8 hitter raised his average on the year to .321. Marwin, who continues to play stellar defense, clubbed his fourth double, stole third for the second time in the series, and scored a run, continues to do almost every right (minus that bunt he didn't get down last weekend). Not sure what he has to do to hit somewhere higher in the order, but at least he's hitting.
7) As bad as things seemed at times yesterday, Houston had Chris Carter at the plate with the tying run on first in the 7th, and Rick Ankiel at the plate with the bases loaded representing the tying run again in the 8th. So even though we're losing, we're right in these games, which is all you really want. Baseball's one of those games where you just need to be competitive and eventually the law of averages will even out and we'll start winning some. Hey, it's better than losing every game 10-0.
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