GAME 8 - April 7: Miguel Tejada, Welcome to Houston!

Houston 5, St Louis 3

Word for the Day: Vindication. The act of defending against criticism or censure.

With Miguel Tejada's acquisition by the Astros just one day ahead of his outing in the Mitchell Report, one had to wonder about how he'd be received by the Houston fans. I'm sure that there are many fans who are ready to boo Tejada - and to boo Ed Wade for trading so many players to get him. But they weren't booing tonight when Tejada hit a walk-off 2-run homer to give the Astros a big fat W in their home season opener. Tejada practically frolicked on his way around the bases, before arriving at home plate for the Ritual Brainbashing by the rest of the team. It was Miggy's second hit of the night, and second home run in two days.

Meanwhile, he was in good company, in the slugging department - all of the Astros runs were scored on home runs. Berkman and Lee hit back-to-back homers in the 7th to break the 0-0 tie, then Towles led off the 8th with one more to make it 3-0. That should have been plenty for Valverde to work with in the top of the 9th for the save, but Big Papa hasn't exactly been lights out this season. He promptly gave back the whole shebang - 3 runs on 3 hits and 2 BBs. Happily, Tejada poked the ball over the right field wall to win it - for Valverde.

Argh. The assignment of wins to pitchers is one of those things in the baseball scoring rules that sometimes leads to really bizarre outcomes. Valverde came in to save the game and instead gave back all of the runs. But because the Astros came back to win it before there was an opportunity for anyone else to pitch, he was the pitcher of record at the end. So the Astros pitchers have a very odd win record this year. No starting pitcher has a win. Valverde, with a 12+ ERA, has 2 wins, and Wright has one - based on a game in which he faced only one batter.

The guy who got cheated in this game was Wandy Rodriguez. This may have been his best start ever - he pitched 7 1/3 shutout innings, only giving up 3 hit, walking none, and striking out 6. He had five 1-2-3 innings!

Another fine performance in this game by Ed Wade's other big acquisition, Michael Bourn. He hit two singles - and both times ended up on second with successful steals. That makes a league-leading 6 steals for him in the first 8 games of the season.

Health Update: Wiggington is still day to day. Berkman is back on the field. And Matsui is on his way to Corpus for rehab - and could be back with the big league team as early as Sunday. In other news, Lidge is back from his injury and logged his first save of the season for the Phillies tonight.

Fashion Statement: The photos on this blog are obviously not taken at this game. (Like most of my photos, they are from Spring Training). This was not a red-shirt day; it was the first home pinstripe game of the season. But speaking of my photos, I have updated the Astros Fan in Exile website with Photo Albums from Spring Training. Click here to take a look. Can you identify all the Astros players?