The Astros beat the Washington Nationals yesterday 6-5 in a game that wasn’t as close as the final score makes it seem. If the Nats hadn’t scored 4 runs in the 7th inning, the win would have been a blowout.
With the Astros having bad luck so far in the standings, the story wasn’t the win (it is Spring Training after all). The real story was a good outing from Wandy Rodriguez.
He pitched four strong innings giving up 4 hits and one run. This did result in a high pitch count of 72 pitches (25 in the first inning), but in mid-March, this isn’t as big of a worry as it would be in early-May.
It does bring up a long-standing concern about Wandy’s routine in a game. He tends to be at his worst in the first few innings of a game and then be unhittable in the later innings. However, if the pitch count is already high, he won’t make it past the fifth inning (if we are lucky) and we could be looking at another early hole in the standings.
I would be more panicked if it was early-May, so I stay optimistic that as his strength builds, Wandy will finally overcome the early inning blues.
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Richard Justice wrote a great article yesterday (when does he write a bad article?). Check it out: 50 Reasons to Watch the 2011 Astros
