 04/21/2002 01:03 am ET
Pitching a problem for Houston
By Alyson Footer / MLB.com
HOUSTON -- After Saturday night's game, it became painfully obvious that the only Astros pitchers who had a good day on the mound were the two disabled relievers who threw early batting practice prior to the second game of the Houston-San Francisco
series.
Hipolito Pichardo and Doug Brocail had their most productive throwing sessions and are inching closer to returning to live game action, but unfortunately they were unavailable to render their services during the Giants' 13-9 win in a typical Astros Field slugfest.
Spot starter Tim Redding, filling in for the injured Wade Miller, arrived from Triple-A New Orleans in time to record his shortest Major League outing yet. He made it through two full innings before failing to retire any of the six batters he faced in the third, getting a quick but much-needed hook by manager Jimy Williams.
Redding's pitching line wasn't pretty: two-plus innings, six hits, five runs, three walks, two strikeouts. And a balk.
The balk may have been Redding's undoing. With the bases loaded and Jeff Kent at the plate with no outs in the third inning, second base umpire Paul Schreiber noticed that Redding stepped off the pitching rubber with the wrong leg and tagged Redding with the balk. David Bell trotted home to score the Giants' first run, and Redding faced only three more batters before his night was over.
"He got through the first couple of innings," Manager Jimy Williams said. "I don't know if the balk situation maybe allowed him to lose his focus or concentration in that game, I'm not quite sure. But then they got some hits on him."
Said catcher Brad Ausmus: "He was pitching pretty well and after the balk, it broke his concentration. He seemed to struggle after that."
One thing that all parties agreed upon: the balk was the right call.
"In my frame of mind, I thought I stepped off with the right foot but I stepped off with my left foot," Redding said. "I even said to the umpire 'I stepped off with this foot' and of course I'm pointing to the one I stepped off with and it's my left foot."
But Redding's rough outing was just the beginning of the Astros' troubles. Of the five relievers used over the game's final seven innings, Scott Linebrink was the only one who did not allow a run. However, Linebrink only pitched two-thirds of an inning before taking a trip to St. Joseph's hospital with a bruised right hand that he suffered when Benito Santiago sent a hard liner back to the mound while making the second out in the Giants' five-run third frame.
"It's not broken or anything," Linebrink said. "It's just bruised. It's feeling better already. I don't see it setting me back much and hopefully it won't swell back up."
The rest of the relievers -- Brandon Puffer, T.J.Mathews, Ricky Stone and Octavio Dotel -- combined to allow eight runs. The Astros managed to pull together a couple of rallies through the late innings, only to lose more ground with each Giant at-bat. The final blow was J.T. Snow's two-run homer in the ninth off Dotel that put the game out of reach for good.
Sure, the team can chalk it up to just one bad game, but Miller's absence -- estimated to be a minimum of one month while he tends to a pinched nerve in his neck -- is already being felt on the field and in the division standings. Not only was the team counting on Miller to repeat his 16-8, 3.39 ERA performance from 2001, but they expected him to make it through the year healthy, as he did a year ago when he logged 212 innings.
Instead, the Astros are 7-10 and a season-high 4 1/2 games out of first place without him.
Filling Miller's shoes is a tall order, and Redding refuses to psych himself out by worrying about picking up the slack for the team's Opening Day starter. Club officials have not yet told Redding what they have planned for him in the near future, but as far as he knows, he'll be in Houston until Miller comes back.
"Unfortunately, I had to come in a situation where Wade got hurt," said Redding, who was optioned to Triple-A after the final day of the exhibition season. "And he's one of our catalyst leaders, especially on the mound. We're trying to ride him like we rode him last year when he won 16 games, and to get a shot in the arm about him going down is obviously not a positive thing."
Just about the only positives the Astros took from Saturday's game were the two 10-minute throwing sessions by Pichardo and Brocail. Pichardo said he anticipates throwing a simulated game before heading to New Orleans for a rehab assignment, while Brocail's schedule will take longer -- he's still at least a month away.
For now, both pitchers will have to watch helplessly from the Astros' bench, unable to help stop the bleeding that resulted in the Giants' 11th straight win at Astros Field.
"(It was a) long night," Williams said. "We got behind 9-2, then came back late. We just couldn't shut them off there in the latter part of that game."
Alyson footer covers the Astros for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
|
|
|
|
News
