Roy Oswalt Gives Up 6 Runs But Gets A ND In Astros Loss To The Marlins

I could tell from the very beginning that Roy was FAR from his old self. For one thing, he wasn't doing his usual thing of getting the ball and throwing, He hemmed and hawed around between pitches and batters. These Marlins hitters are VERY different from most hitters - they take a LOT of pitches and will NOT swing at borderline pitches or unhittable pitches. amusement I'm sure what is said is that they don't strike out, they put the ball in play. But that is besides the point. Which is that they take pitches, something the Astros refuse to do. Anyway, the ump sure nuff didn't do Roy any favors. Then again, Pence didn't help him in the 6th by taking a bad route to a popup and letting it drop in and Miggy didn't do him any favors by bobbling a ball and not getting an out at ANY base. And then Fulchino didn't do him any favors by letting 2 of his runs score. Fulchino was lucky he only blew the game by 2 runs, seeing as how he couldn't get his breaking ball over for strikes. Which reminds me - when you have a team full of guys who refuse to swing at anything that resembles a borderline pitch, the ump will NOT call ANYTHING on the black as a strike for your team, even if they WILL call pitches 3" off the plate as strikes for the OTHER team (see Calero's 3 pitch "strikeout" of Blum in the 7th.) Byrdak had a great 1.1 innings - he threw strikes that even the ump would call and the hitters couldn't work the count. It will be VERY interesting to see how Bud Norris does tomorrow, that is fer SHER. Because walking one of these guys to pitch to the next guy will NOT work. And The Astros would have been ahead even further than they were if it wasn't for incredibly stupid baserunning errors by Pence (ignoring the batter and sliding into second, then getting up and running to third on what shuld have been an RBI double) and Clank (deciding to go to third on a fly out to shallow center with only 1 out.) And speaking of Pence, I was glad to see him get 2 solid singles that weren't just grounders to short that he beat out. Hope he can start hitting some doubles and some solid balls to the gaps again - he hasn't done that in months.