Astros take down Cubs
April 30th, 2009 | by admin |Well sort of, they did beat them two out of three, but scored only five runs in the process. Looking at the Astros this year is a bit confusing. They have a lot of hitters doing some great things and some pitchers performing better than expected, but the end result is a last place team. Granted, the NL Central is better than most of the divisions in baseball, but there are still only two NL teams worse than the Astros. How is this happening?
The easy answer comes in their performance with runners in scoring position. Following are the ugly numbers on those:
AVG: .258 (8th)
OBP: .336 (14th)
SLG: .384 (10th)
That’s not good, but even those numbers can’t fully explain why a team with as many good players could be 14th in runs scored. I don’t care who you got on the mound. You aren’t going to get very far with an offense that inept. This is why it is so frustrating to see all the area journalists focus on the lack of pitching on the staff. Yes, no one is going to confuse the rotation with the 1970 Orioles, but the offense has been worse than the pitching in every season since 2004. Yet, everyone talks about the need for more pitching. Go figure.
