If you came out of a coma last night and saw Oswalt pitch, you would never know he was struggling this season. Roy had as good a game as he has had all season. Tony Gwynn, Jr. tied it up nicely after the game when he said “The only thing he didn’t do to us tonight was throw a no-hitter.”
He made one mistake: a wild pitch in the fourth inning that brought in David Eckstein who had gotten on base by being hit in the elbow. That’s it. Two hours and eleven minutes after the start of the game, the Astros had won it 3-1.
This is the Oswalt I have grown to love. This is the Oswalt that strikes fear in the hearts of opposing players.
“That’s his M.O.,” said Gwynn. “Unless you get on him and stay on him, unless you get more out of situations like that than just one run – he’s Roy Oswalt. When he gets the stop, you can see it in him. He gets tougher and tougher and tougher.”
Roy has had such bad luck this season when he hands the ball to the bullpen; he decided to do it all last night in a 109-pitch, complete game. It truly was inspiring to see and he dominated the Padres which is good because the Astros offense couldn’t do much against Josh Geer.
Oswalt has the best winning percentage of any pitcher against the Padres. He is 10-2 in his career against San Diego and one of the losses came earlier this season when he gave up four and just wasn’t at the top of his game.
“What you saw tonight is what has made him one of the best right-handed pitchers since he came into the league,” Padres manager Bud Black said. “When we had him in one stressful situation, he fought his way out. A pitcher like that,you’re going to have one or two quality chances. We had our chance in the fourth, but just couldn’t get the big knock.”
Let’s see if Oswalt can build on this win and have the good luck to get more of them for the rest of the season.
Astros Draft Update
We have had some more signings for the Houston Astros. Dallas Keuchel, an LHP from the Arkansas Razorbacks, signed over the weekend and reported to the Tri-City ValleyCats on Monday. This is a quick signing for Houston as they had to wait until Arkansas was eliminated in the College World Series before they could talk to him. It’s also a great signing as evidenced by this quote yesterday from the Arkansas newspaper.
“In three years with the Razorbacks Keuchel played a prominent role in Arkansas’ pitching fortunes as both a starter and reliever. He accumulated 19 wins and a 4.56 ERA over 234.2 innings pitched in his time with the Razorbacks and his career totals rank just outside Arkansas’ all-time top 10. His 2009 season was the best by a Razorback starter since 2007.”
The Astros also signed a pitcher as a free agent who quite possibly has the coolest last name ever for an athlete: Max Fearnow. Max pitched for Stanford with Jason Castro as his catcher. This season, he was 4-3 with a 4.29 ERA and 35 strikeouts.
That leaves us with 16 picks that haven’t been signed. One of them, high schooler Geoffery Thomas, is a fairly high pick at 371, but I wonder if he is going to choose to go to college instead of signing. The remaining picks are lower on the list, but I still hope we will sign some of them.
Posted by macavityabc on June 30, 2009 at 4:14 pm
It would be great if Oswalt and Berkman could recover their form. The Central Division’s so bad, the Astros might have a chance to win it.
Posted by superpowers on July 1, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I know. That makes me think that the Astros are going to do another one of those second halves of the season where they play great and give us all a heart attack.