What started out as a spring training pitching duel, turned into a one sided 12-2 Cleveland victory. Houston was in it through 5 innings until the Indians broke it wide open in innings 5 through 9 with a constant attack at the plate. Chad Paronto, Geoff Geary and Stephen Randolph had themselves a very rough opening day in relief for the Astros. In a total of 2.2 innings of work they gave up 11 hits, 11 runs, walked 5 batters and gave up a solo-homer to Cleveland SS Danny Sandoval in the 6th. Combine their five walks to the 5 more given up by other relievers makes a total of 10. It also makes for a very unhappy skipper according to Alyson Footer of MLB.com. Unfortunately pitching wasn’t the only issue because the bats were idle pretty much throughout the entire game. The only action at the plate for the Astros was in the 6th and 8th innings where they scored 1 runner a piece. The lack of scoring can be attributed to the fact that Houston had only 6 hits to Cleveland’s 15 and the fact that that 8 runners were left on base.
With all this bad news out of the way it seems like a perfect time to bring up some good news to lighten the mood. Wandy Rodriguez put in a solid start for the Astros as he pitched 2 scoreless innings, gave up only 1 hit and stuck out 3. Young gun Mark McLemore also put in a couple of scoreless innings, giving up 1 hit but walking 4. That’s about all the good news I have to report on for game 1 of spring training except for the fact that its spring ball so don’t take the results too hard.
Next up:
A home game at Osceola County Stadium starting at 12:05 vs. Cleveland. Look for Roy Oswalt to start and give 2 innings of work, and also look for Miguel Tejada, Carlos Lee, and Hunter Pence to contribute.
