1) Chris Carter, aka Trogdor the Bombinator, is finally locked in. Carter crushed his third home run of the series last night, and is 9 for his last 18 effectively rebounding from his 1 for 19 start. I'd still like to see the big man draw some more walks (he has 1 through the first 9 games), but I'm not going to complain when he's just hitting absolute moonshots.
2) J.D. Martinez is going to create some interesting discussions when Fernando Martinez gets healthy again. J.D. has been swinging a hot bat lately driving in 5 runs over the last two games, homering, stealing a base, playing decent defense... Honestly he's playing well enough that he should keep his roster spot. So what do you do when F-Mart, who was on track to make the team out of spring training before his injury comes back? Send him to AAA? Send J.D. to AAA? Send someone else to AAA? Now I don't think Fernando is going to be back TOMORROW or anything that drastic, but he's going to be back at some point. I think the player that makes the most sense to send down right now is Wallace. Carter can play first and DH basically alternating with Carlos Pena and then F-Mart can fill in one of the corner outfield spots against righties. But it's possible that different players could heat up or cool down in the coming weeks and that could always change the whole complexion of the discussion. Needless to say, it's a good problem to have.
3) Marwin Gonzalez's home run last night gave him homers in back-to-back games and matched his home run total for ALL of 2012. The second year infielder and former Rule 5 Draft Pick is 8 for 18 on the season with a double, a pair of homers, a perfect-game wrecking single off of Yu Darvish and a team-high 4 walks. It's clear he's got the hot bat right now, and hopefully Bo Porter rides him until he cools off. I love the left side of our infield with Marwin in the game too. Between him and Sweet Matty D over on the hot corner, not much gets through and that's a huge boost to our starting pitching.
4) I really like what Brad Peacock brings to the table, but he's got to become more efficient with his pitches. Peacock faced just one hitter in the 6th inning and finished his night having thrown 95 pitches. Granted, this was only the fourth start of his Major League career, and you have to figure he'll get better as he gains experience, but he's not really going to blossom until he can go deeper into games.
5) Dallas Keuchel has been something of a pleasant surprise working out of the Astros bullpen so far this season. In 5 innings of work, he's allowed just one run, and he tossed two scoreless innings last night preserving a 5-3 lead to earn the Astros first hold of the season. Keuchel got off to a fast start last year too though allowing just 3 runs in his first 20 innings of work before going 0-7 in his next 9 starts with an ERA of 7.33. Hopefully he doesn't fall into a similar rut this year, because having an effective long reliever could really save the bullpen some work.
6) Rick Ankiel now has two hits on the season, and both of them are home runs. Because of that, despite his .111 average and the fact that he's struck out in 14 of his 18 plate appearances, he's actually second on the team with 5 runs batted in right now.
7) Every Astro in the starting lineup last night got at least one hit, the first time this season that that feat was accomplished. I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise though considering they were hitting around .200 before Tuesday night's game. After their last two wins though? .263.
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