The Houston Astros lost 7-4 to the Atlanta Braves today making today their tenth loss in a row putting their Grapefruit League record at 1-10-1.

Cecil Cooper isnt’t happy and who can blame him?

From Alyson’s Footnotes: “The lineup looked largely like the one projected for Opening day: Matsui, Bourn, Berkman, Lee, Pence, Boone…with one of the projected starting pitchers, Brian Moehler, on the mound. And still, the Astros just weren’t very good.

“This was veterans today,” Cooper said. “We didn’t hit, and we didn’t execute our pitches. I don’t have any answers about why this is happening, unless someone put the hex on us.”

Cooper concluded with, “this is bordering on ridiculous.”"

What can you be excited about if you are an Astros fan right now? Bullpen performance: Today Valverde, Brocail, and Byrdak all pitched a scoreless frame.  Woohoo…

Because of the clubs recent performance, Lance Berkman is going to be making a road trip for the next game tomorrow.  Maybe he’ll go 4-4 with 8 RBI and he’ll pitch 4 scoreless innings.

It’s only Spring Training and 10 wins in a row wouldn’t count either but you can understand the frustration of Cecil Cooper.

So far Houston has only won one game in the Grapefruit League this Spring Training and people are wondering if it is time to hit the panic button. 

Before I get into what I think here is the opinion of a few Houston Astros’ sports writers:

Alyson Footer, Houston’s MLB.com beat writer, says she is “worried” in a recent post on her blog, Alyson’s Footnotes.

The fashionably negative Brian McTaggart, one of the Houston Astros beat writers from chron.com, surprisingly says it’s not time to hit the panic button…yet.

And chron.com fan blogger Chip Bailey needs Astros’ fans to tell him why he shouldn’t panic, because he is ready to.

I don’t think it is near time to panic.  Caution? maybe. Worried? sure. But definitely not time to panic. 

Houston has been outscored 31-78.  Pretty bad right? No.

This is without Carlos Lee (although he is on his way back to Florida after Panama was the first team to be eliminated in the WBC), Miguel Tejada, and Lance Berkman.  Wait, Berkman is still at Spring Training isn’t he? Well yeah, but he hasn’t traveled to hardly any of the road games.  So the potency of our line up is well…missing. 

So far, this Spring Training has been an opportunity for Houston to get a good look at their prospects and try to get their pitchers some work in. Btw, no Roy-O either.

Check back with me when Houston gets their big bats back in the lineup.  Until then, I am more concerned with Roy’s work load on team USA for the WBC.  He should have been out of that game a little earlier.

Panic time? No way.  Maybe if it were April.

From astros.mlb.com

Stros at the plate : “Jason Smith put the Astros on the board first, driving in Darin Erstad with an RBI triple in the fifth frame. Michael Bourn knocked a double in the sixth to drive in Drew Sutton. Mark Saccomanno tripled to lead off the seventh and scored when center fielder Roger Bernadina overthrew home plate after fielding Humberto Quintero’s fly ball. Reggie Abercrombie drove in two with a double later in that inning, and Chris Johnson knocked a solo homer in the eighth”

Stros on the mound : “Mike Hampton turned a rough beginning into a solid outing, allowing no runs over two scoreless frames. He hit the first batter he faced and walked the next two to load the bases, but he struck out Austin Kearns and coaxed a double play from Jesus Flores to end the inning. Russ Ortiz, a fifth-starter hopeful, allowed one hit over two innings”

Sounds like Hampton got off to a shaky start but settled down.  From JJO of the Houston Chronicle, Hampton on his own performance and Cooper on Hampton:

“My arm felt good,” Hampton said after throwing two hitless innings. “My body felt good. Obviously location wasn’t where it needs to be, but all in all I felt good out there. Pitches and location will come. I got through with no hits, no runs. It wasn’t pretty at times, but I got there.”

“Mike seemed to be just a little bit tentative early, missing the zone a little bit,” Cooper said. “But then after … the first three (guys) he started to pitch a little bit and was real sharp. Russ, I thought, threw the ball really well.”

Apparently Hampton’s start was delayed due to the governor of Florida running late.

Houston’s Spring Training Record 1-0-0

So far so good.

Lance Berkman, Miguel Tejada, Carlos Lee, Hunter Pence all sat out of today’s game.  Berkman, Tejada, and Lee will all play tomorrow.

Here is the lineup Cooper used for the game today:

Matsui 2b
Bourn cf
Pence rf
Blum 3b
Michaels lf
Erstad dh
Boone 1b
Smith ss
Towles c

Houston will play the Atlanta Braves tomorrow at Disney starting at 1:05 ET.  Roy Oswalt will make the start.

This is why I love Carlos Lee.

From Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle:

“Just days after several New York Yankees attended Alex Rodriguez’s press conference to support the disgraced steroids user, Carlos Lee, Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt parodied the Yankees as Lee held a brief press conference after his first workout of the spring Thursday.

After the Panamanian missed the club’s first full-squad workout Tuesday at Osceola County Stadium because he thought the reporting date was Thursday, Berkman chastised the slugger and Oswalt ridiculed Lee’s excuse. Once Lee was in camp, though, they all had fun with the misunderstanding.

Oswalt even suggested the gesture of mocking the infamous A-Rod press conference that was held last Tuesday afternoon in Tampa. Once practice was over, Berkman hugged Lee and sat at his side.

“We got to have one other person,” Lee said.

A few seconds later, and long after he had showered and dressed to go home, Oswalt sat nearby because he had waited for nearly an hour just to participate in the skit.

“He’s 100 percent backing me up,” Lee said as the sluggers declared love for each other.

“Let’s get through this together, Carlos,” Berkman said.

“I got confused with the reporting date,” Lee said. “I really thought it was on Thursday. It was on Tuesday, but I take full responsibility of it. There’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is catch up with all the conditioning Lance got in the last two days.”

Berkman quickly chirped in: There’s no doubt. … It’s going to take you a lot longer than that to catch me.”

Lee has such a good relationship with his teammates and he consistently produces on the field.  What more can you ask for?  How about mocking Alex Rodriguez? That’s what I’m talking about.

In other Spring Training news, Astros non-roster invitee and veteran catcher hopeful Toby Hall is feeling discomfort in his throwing arm.  An MRI is scheduled to try and diagnose the problem.

Chris Sampson is scheduled to throw his first bullpen session Monday.

Roy Oswalt and Mike Hampton each threw batting practice today.  Oswalt is ahead of schedule relative to the other pitchers at Spring Training due to his preparation for the World Baseball Classic.

Today was the date for the first full squad workout, that means everyone…unless you’re Carlos Lee.  According to Alyson Footer of Astros.mlb.com, Lee didn’t report today because he had the “report for Spring Training” date mixed up.  Lee is now scheduled to arrive in camp on the 19th.  Fortunately for Stros fans and the media, Lance Berkman did show up and he wasn’t real happy with Lee:

“On one hand, it’s Carlos, Berkman said. “That’s just the way he is. He’s a great teammate, we love having him in here and obviously he’s a tremendous RBI guy. But part of you certainly is like…he and myself and Miggy and may be a couple other guys, we’re going to be looked to to carry the load. I think it’s a good example for the young guys and everybody else to be here when everybody gets here.”

Miguel Tejada DID arrive today and temporarily addressed his teammates and the media.  Nothing new however.

Finally, some good news from the camp, Mike Hampton’s heart “glitch” worked itself out and he should be back in camp Thursday at the latest.

For more on Berkman and what he thinks about Drayton McLane among other things, visit Alyson Footers Spring Training blog.  Pretty interesting stuff.

Carlos Lee hit a grand slam in the fifth inning off of Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo and the Astros went onto defeat the Reds by the score of 6-2.  The Astros have now won the first two games of the three game series and will be going for the sweep on Wednesday.  The way they are playing compared to the Reds, I think they will get that sweep!

Besides Lee going deep for the grand slam in the fifth inning, Miguel Tejada had a solo home run in the third inning.  The first run for the Astros came in the second inning when Hunter Pence tripled to deep center and Lee scored.  Those three swings of the bat were all the Astros needed because the pitchers shut down the Reds for the most part.

Brian Moehler came within one out of recording a complete game but still got the win.  Moehler pitched great as he gave up two runs on seven hits.  Moehler now has a 6-4 record on the season.  Wesley Wright came in to record the final out and record his first save of the season.

Let’s sit back and watch the Astros on Wednesday as they go for the sweep!  Astros Baseball

The Houston Astros headed into the 9th inning with a 3-2 lead but closer Jose Valverde pitched terrible and was charged with six runs and the Astros lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates by the score of 9-3.  That was not the way the Astros wanted to kick off the three game series with the Pirates.  WIth the loss, the Astros are now a dissappointing 46-53 on the season.

Valverde gave up two home runs and two run single in the ninth inning.  He was also charged with two more runs when Freddy Sanchez hit a three run inside the park home run off of Tim Byrdak.  It sucked that Valverde sucked it up so bad when the other pitchers didn’t throw the ball that badly.

Runelvys Hernandez pitched the first 5 1/3 innings in the game and got the no decision.  Hernandez gave up two runs on eight hits while walking two batters and striking out three others. Geoff Geary tossed 1 2/3 innings while Doug Brocail tossed an inning of relief.  Geary and Brocail both did not allow a run score as they threw the ball good.

Carlos Lee led the Astros at the plate as he had two rbi singles in the game.  Brad Ausmus also had a rbi double to contibute.  The Astros just didn’t get the big hit at the plate as they had plenty of base runners on in the game.  The Astros stranded 30 runners on base and struckout nine times.  That is just not getting the job done when you need to come up with a big hit.

Astros Blog

An all-around great game for the Astros tonight.

Brian Moehler pitched an outstanding game. He went 7 innnings, giving up only 4 hits and one run, a solo-homerun to Jim Edmonds. He really had command of the strike zone last night, to bad he couldn’t get the win, he had to settle for the no-decision.

Carlos Lee hit a mammoth shot in the bottom of the seventh inning to tie the game. The Astros then got two straight hits, but could not muster another run in the inning to give Moehler the lead.

Geoff Geary came in and pitched two perfect innings to get it to the Astros in the bottom of the ninth. Miguel Tejada doubled off Howry to get the inning going. The next batter, Hunter Pence, followed with the walk-off double to seal the game.

It was great to see the Astros come out of the gate and beat the Cubs in this fashion. Hopefully it will swing a lot of momemtum our way. Who knows, maybe this is the start of our patented second half run.

Brandon Backe pitched an extremely strong game, going into the 8th inning without giving up any runs. The Astros won it in the end by the score of 5-0. Backe was the man of the day, not just because his pitching, but he also went 2-3 with a double and is now batting .345 on the year. He made a strong case to stay in the rotation today.

Ty Wigginton got the scoring going with a solo homerun in second inning. Carlos Lee had two hits again today to go with 3 RBI’s. He is now batting .302 on the year.

J.R. Towles finally got a start today, but could not get a hit. This bothers me because I don’t understand why he was brought up to sit and watch Ausmus play. This could be killing his development. He came back up and had hit safely 3 times in the 4 previous games. Why would Cooper sit him for 4 games after that? It’s not like Ausmus is tearing the cover off the ball. I would much rather try and see if Towles can pull it together, since he was supposed to be our catcher of the future. Ausmus knows he was brought back to mentor Towles, not start. I hope Cooper wasn’t surprised or dissapointed when Towles went 0-4, because I sure wasn’t.

Now we head into the All-Star break in last place with a 44-51 record. Not exactly what we had hoped for. At least we will get to watch Berkman in the Homerun Derby tomorrow night, and him and Tejada in the All-Star Game. Hopefully the rest will rejuvinate our team into a second half run. No one said I couldn’t dream…

The Astros got on the board early and then scored a total of 6 runs in the game to beat the Nationals 6-4.

Wandy Rodriguez had a good start, giving up 4 runs over 5 and a third innings. He was cruising after giving up 2 early runs, but found trouble in the 6th leaving with the bases loaded.

Hunter Pence was the man of the night for the Astros though. He went 2-3 with 3 RBI’s, including a 2-run homer. Lance Berkman also contributed with a two run double in the fifth, his 30th double of the year. Carlos Lee continued his hot streak by going 3-5 and raised his average to .299. It’s good to see him ripping the ball.

Chris Sampson and Geoff Geary came in and pitched two and two thirds of scoreless innings until Jose Valverde came in to pitch a perfect ninth inning for his 24th save.

All in all it was a good game tonight, especially since it follwed an extremely poor outing last night.