Thursday, April 9, 2009

Next Up: Friday @ St Louis

Mike Hampton will make his first start of the year against Albert Pujols and company on Friday. Hampy is attempting to throw a complete season for the first time since 2004. After ending a strong 08' with the Braves and a decent spring training with the spacemen, Hampton has more confidence than ever, plus he uses Head & Shoulders, which helps. During ST Hampy Hamperton threw 30 innings with 22 K's and 7 free rides to candyland. More impressive was his 4.80 ERA. OK, it wasn't that impressive, but still, for a number 5 starter who is like 68 years old, pretty impressive.

Let's look at some lifetime stats against the Red Birds.


Hampy has logged 150.1 IP's, 144 hits, 95 K's and a 3.71 ERA.
This is nothing spectacular by any means, but it is somewhat impressive given his career averages being a little bit higher against other teams. Don't look for Hampy to overwhelm anyone in the game, but he will provide enough support for the Astros to get something going offensively.

The tale of the tape: Joel Pineiro:

Astros hitters have only logged 27 Ab's lifetime against Pineiro. The big 3 of Berkman, Lee and Tejada have pretty much owned Pineiro in the small snippet of AB's. Berk and Tejada are sluggin like 2.100000 against him. Hell, even Brandon Backe has a .333 avg against the guy. All of that really may not matter as Pineiro threw six scoreless innings on Monday to close out spring training. He was a former potential closer for Boston before Papelbon was well, before Papelbon was Papelbon. Pineiro was converted to a back end starter for the 2009 campaign. Pineiro's 6-2 record, 3.94 ERA and 1.35 WHIP in 14 career games (13 starts) at Busch Stadium paints the picture of a match ups pitcher with minimal appeal.

Swami says:

Look for the big 3 to mash against the Puerto Rican on Friday. Astros 6 Card's 4

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