The Rocket dominated the Cubs for seven innings in running his record to 8-0 as the Stros beat the Cubs on Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley Field, 5-1.
Clemens struck out five and gave up only five hits, a run, and two walks in his seven innings of work. His effort was was highlighted by his running discussion with home plate umpire Mike Fichter, which Clemens carried on in a relatively diplomatic manner throughout the game. But after the seventh inning, Clemens walked to the dugout yelling in anger while never looking at Fichter, and Fichter stared at the Rocket during his entire walk to the dugout. As they say in the bigs, Clemens “has a little turd in him.”
As usual, Lance Berkman drove in the lead run and reached base for the 33rd game in a row. Jeff Kent also had a triple and scored three runs, while Lidge and Dotel were dominating in the eighth and ninth innings for the second game in a row.
The Stros get a day to play golf in St. Louis on Thursday before opening a weekend series with the Redbirds on Friday night. Wade Miller, Tim Redding, and Roy O will pitch the series against the Cards.
In other news, the Stros announced the signing of Pete Munro, who has been with the Stros off and on over the past three seasons. Munro had been pitching with the Twins’ AAA club this season, but could opt out of that contract if he received an offer from an MLB club.
The odd man out is Brandon Backe — one of the two Brandons who stunk on Tuesday night in Chicago — who was optioned to AAA New Orleans. Backe has actually pitched better than the other Brandon (Duckworth), but the Stros still have options under Backe’s contract to send him to the minors. I suspect that the Stros do not have any options under Duckworth’s contract. Nevertheless, my sense is that the Stros will do something soon with Duckworth, probably either working out a deal to allow him to attempt to improve at AAA or simply grant him his unconditional release.

The Stros showed some heart tonight as they held on behind some outstanding relief pitching by Mike Gallo and Dan Miceli to beat the Cubbies, 5-3.
After Bags and Jeff Kent yaks staked the Stros to an early lead, the Cubs tied it at 3-3 behind three solo shots off of Stros’ starter Brandon Gopherworth, er. or make that Duckworth (Duckworth has now given up a rather startling nine home runs in 24 innings this seasons). After the third shot in the fourth, the Cubs loaded the bases with no outs against Duckworth, when manager Jimy Williams made good use of his quick hook. Gallo came in and and struck out Corey Patterson on four pitches and then induced Ramon Martinez to bounce into a 1-2-3 double play. Gallo won player of the game for that effort.
The Cubs loaded the bases again in the sixth off of Brandon Backe (the only ineffective Astros reliever in this game; guess it wasn’t a good night for pitchers named Brandon) when Miceli came on to get Lee to pop out and fan Patterson and Martinez. Mike Lamb came through with a clutch pinch hit two run double in the eighth, and then Lidge and Dotel mowed down the Cubs with relative ease in the final two frames. Between them, Patterson, Martinez, and Derreck Lee left an incredible 15 Cub teammates stranded on base, much to the vocal disdain of the Cubs’ fans.
The only downer of the game was the continued futility of Duckworth, who was one of the three pitchers that the Stros received from the Phillies in the Billy Wagner deal. My sense is that Duckworth needs some tuning at AAA to determine whether he can pitch at this level consistently, but I don’t know whether the Stros have any options left under his contract.
The Rocket revs up for his first ever game at Wrigley on Wednesday afternoon against the Cubs’ testy Matt Clement, who likes to throw high and tight just as much as Clemens. Should be interesting.

Aging superstar Greg Maddux made it seem like old times today as he handcuffed the Stros over seven innnings and led the Cubs to a 3-1 victory at Wrigley. The Stros have now lost eight of their last 11 games as they begin a 12 game, two week road trip, which is their longest of the season.
Hard luck Roy O (3-4) pitched well again as he continues to receive poor run support from his teammates. Ex-Astro Moises Alou‘s two-run yak in the sixth was the game winner, while Lance Berkman‘s ninth dinger in his last 13 games was the only offense the Stros could muster.
With Andy Pettitte going back on the disabled list today, the Stros’ Brandon Duckworth makes the start tomorrow night at Wrigley against the Cubs Glendon Rusch.

Bags, Lance Berkman and Mike Lamb all cranked two-run dingers Sunday afternoon and Tim Redding pitched seven and a third shutout innings as the Stros won the final game of their weekend series with the Cardinals, 7-1.
Redding (3-3) allowed just four hits and, after a first inning single, retired 16 of the next 18 batters. The Stros got to Matt Morris (4-5) for three runs and four hits in seven innings with Lamb’s yak being the big blow, and then Bags and Berkman’s homers in the bottom of the eighth against Cal Eldred put the game away. Berkman has now hit eight home runs in his last 12 games.
The Stros now become road warriors for the next two weeks as they go on a 13 game road trip to Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, and Milwaukee. Roy O starts tomorrow’s Memorial Day game against the Cubs’ Greg Maddux at Wrigley Field.
The Stros (27-22) are inching their way to the one-third mark of the season, and its an appropriate time to assess how the club is doing. This post from yesterday explained the helpful hitting statistic of “runs created against average,” or “RCAA,” which computes the number of outs that a particular player uses in creating runs for his team and then compares that number to the amount of runs that an average player in the league would create while using an equivalent number of outs.
Through yesterday’s games, here are the National League leaders in RCAA, courtesy of Lee Sinins:
1 Barry Bonds 41
2 Lance Berkman 33
3 Mike Lowell 30
4 Sean Casey 26
5 Craig Wilson 25
T6 Bobby Abreu 20
T6 Scott Rolen 20
8 Jim Thome 19
T9 Adam Dunn 18
T9 Todd Helton 18
Consequently, in case you didn’t know it already, Lance Berkman is currently the second best hitter in the National League behind Barry Bonds, who happens to be one of the best hitters of all-time. Why on earth does manager Jimy Williams continue to bat Berkman either fifth or sixth in the order?
Although the Stros are currently a respectable fourth in the National League in team RCAA, the individual numbers are more revealing:
Lance Berkman 33
Jeff Bagwell 10
Craig Biggio 6
Jeff Kent 4
Mike Lamb 3
Eric Bruntlett 1
Jason Lane 0
Orlando Palmeiro -2
Raul Chavez -3
Richard Hidalgo -3
Morgan Ensberg -5
Adam Everett -5
Jose Vizcaino -6
Brad Ausmus -9
Thus, Berkman is having a monster season, and Bags is solid. However, after a fast start (the peril of relying on a small sample of games), Biggio is falling back to his declining trend over the past several seasons of not being much better than an average NL player. The reality is that the Stros would probably get at least as good offense and much better defense by replacing Bidg with Jason Lane as the season wears on, but don’t expect Manager “I love my veterans” Williams to make such a move.
Moreover, despite the media’s touting of Jeff Kent‘s meaningless 15 game hitting streak, Kent also is hitting just barely above an average NL hitter and has no business batting in front of the torrid Berkman in the lineup. Likewise Richard Hidalgo has slumped badly in May after a hot start and Williams’ use of Palmeiro and Lamb in his place is actually a good move. Why can’t Jimy do that in regard to Biggio?
The perception is that Adam Everett is having a much better season to date than Morgan Ensberg, but the facts indicate that, at least from a hitting standpoint, they are doing the same. Of course, Everett is the best defensive player on the team, so some indulgence of mediocre hitting is more justified than with other players. Ensberg had a horrendous April and a better May, but his power numbers are still way down from last season. After hitting 25 yaks last season, Ensberg still does not have one this season.
And, as readers of this blog already know, Brad Ausmus and Jose Vizcaino are among the worst hitters in Major League Baseball and, thus, should be used as little as possible. Of course, under veteran-entranced Williams, Ausmus is a starter and Viz is a key regular. I’m not certain that the rest of the Astros’ hitters are good enough to make up for the regular negative hitting contributions of these two.
The equivalent RCAA statistic for pitchers is called “runs saved against average” or “RSAA.” RSAA basically computes the number of runs that a pitcher saves for his team relative to the number of runs that an average pitcher in the league would give up while obtaining an equivalent number of outs for his team (as with RCAA, RSAA is park-adjusted). As with RCAA, a pitcher can have either a positive RSAA, which indicates he is an above average pitcher, or a negative RSAA, which means he is performing below average.
The following are the current NL leaders in RSAA:
1 Randy Johnson 18
T2 Tom Glavine 17
T2 Livan Hernandez 17
T4 Roger Clemens 14
T4 Brad Penny 14
6 Ben Sheets 13
T7 Armando Benitez 12
T7 Horacio Ramirez 12
T9 Chad Cordero 11
T9 Zach Day 11
T9 Ryan Madson 11
T9 Tomo Ohka 11
T9 Jake Peavy 11
T9 Carlos Zambrano 11
Again, the Stros are a solid third in the NL in team RSAA, but as with RCAA, the individual RSAA stats are more revealing:
Roger Clemens 14
Roy Oswalt 8
Andy Pettitte 4
Octavio Dotel 3
Mike Gallo 3
Brad Lidge 3
Wade Miller 3
Dan Miceli 1
Chad Harville 0
Brandon Backe -2
Ricky Stone -3
Brandon Duckworth -4
Tim Redding -5
Jared Fernandez -6
The Rocket and Roy O are off to solid starts, but the rest of the pitchers are just barely above average or below average (note that Redding’s solid start of today is not included in the above statistics and will improve his negative RSAA considerably). The biggest disappointment has been Dotel, who has been one of the Astros’ leaders in RSAA over the past three seasons.
Consequently, the Stros are solidly in contention in the NL Central, but they are being carried by strong performances by a relatively small group of players (Berkman, Bags, Clemens and Oswalt) while the other players are grinding away at either just above or below average seasons. Inasmuch as older players such as Bags and Clemens will likely trend downward as the season wears on, other Astros will likely have to pick up their performances considerably if the Stros are going to remain in contention for the NL Central title. That’s certainly possible, as Hidalgo, Ensberg, Kent, Redding and Dotel are all candidates to improve their performance from the first third of the season. But it’s also far from a certainty.
The final element — and admittedly the least important — is manager Jimy Williams. As noted here earlier, Williams’ mishandling of Ensberg last season may have cost the Astros the NL Central title that they lost to the Cubs by a game. This season, Williams has continued his inconsistent use of Ensberg, inexplicably bats his best hitter in the five or six hole rather than third, and continues to overuse poor performers Ausmus and Vizcaino.
Again, these may appear to be relatively small errors in isolated circumstances, but over 162 games, those errors in judgment add up and can make a difference, particularly in a close race. The NL Central race looks like it will be a barnburner this season, and its doubtful that the Astros will have any margin for error. Here’s hoping Williams’ illogical prejudices don’t end up costing the Stros in a close race.

The Stros lost their seventh game in the last nine on Saturday afternoon as the Cards scored six runs in the last two innings in their 10-3 victory. Albert Pujols went nuclear on the Stros, going 4 for 5 with two mammoth yaks, a double, and three RBIs.
The game was close until the eighth when things really got out of hand. Jeff Kent went after a foul pop-up from Ray Lankford that appeared to richocet into fair territory (and unfortunately away from Kent) off of one of the Juice Box‘s roof beams. Under Minute Maid Park ground rules, the ball should have been declared a foul ball, but the umpiring staff blew the call, just as they blew the balk call against Dotel the previous game. The flustered Kent overthrew third base on the play, allowing another run to score, and a Vizcaino throwing error on the next batter allowed two more runs to score. After that chaotic interlude, the Stros were toast.
Tim Redding takes the mound tomorrow in the Sunday afternoon game to try and salvage one for the Stros in this series. Ace Matt Morris goes for the Redbirds.

Stros first baseman and future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell played in his 2000th career game last night.
Bags has been good for so long that it is easy to take him for granted. Although he is clearly in the autumn of his career (this will likely be his fifth straight season of declining offensive numbers), Bags in decline is still better than most players.
A team wins baseball games by scoring more runs than the other team. So, the amount of runs that a player creates is the best indication of a player’s hitting ability. In that connection, sabermetricians who have studied hitting statistics over generations have concluded that two particular hitting statistics are the best indicators of how many runs that a player will create — on base average (“OBA”) and slugging percentage (“SLG”). This makes sense because players who get on base frequently (OBA) and who hit the ball hard (SLG) tend to create the most runs. OBA and SLG are combined into a cumulative statistic called “OPS,” which is OBA + SLG = OPS.
Building on these statistics, Lee Sinins, a lawyer turned sabermetrician, has developed another statistic called “runs created against average” (“RCAA”) in connection with his website Baseball Immortals and his related Baseball Sabermetric Encyclopedia, which is an excellent baseball statistical database than can be purchased through Lee’s site.
RCAA is a particularly valuable statistic to evaluate hitting because it focuses on the two most important things in winning baseball games ? that is, creating runs and avoiding making outs. RCAA basically computes the number of outs that a particular player uses in creating runs for his team and then compares that number to the amount of runs that an average player in the league would create while using an equivalent number of outs.
RCAA is computed by taking a specific player’s runs created (“RC”) statistic minus the amount of runs created that an average player would have created using the same amount of his team’s outs based on the league average and adjusted to the player’s home park. The hypothetical average hitter in the league has an RCAA of exactly zero. Thus, a player can have either a positive RCAA — which indicates he is an above average hitter — or a negative RCAA, which means he is performing below average.
For example, as you might expect, Barry Bonds led the NL and MLB last season with a positive 115 RCAA ? that is, he produced an incredible 115 more runs for the Giants than an average NL player would have created using an equivalent number of his team’s outs. On the other side of the ledger, the Stros’ Brad Ausmus was one of the five worst hitters in the NL last season, producing a horrid negative 32 RCAA, which means that he created 32 fewer runs than an average player would have created using an equivalent number of his team’s outs.
In acknowledging Bags’ milestone of playing in his 2000th game, Sinins noted the following:

After 43 RCAA/.966 OPS and 38 RCAA/.919 OPS seasons, Bagwell hit .524 SLG,
.373 OBA, .897 OPS, 21 RCAA in 160 games in 2003 and is off to a .465 SLG,
.411 OBA, .876 OPS, 9 RCAA start in his first 45 games. He has a .957
career OPS, compared to his league average of .762, and 672 RCAA in 2000 games.
Bagwell ranks 8th on the NL’s career RCAA list (since 1900)–
RCAA
1 Barry Bonds 1385
2 Stan Musial 1204
3 Rogers Hornsby 1081
4 Hank Aaron 1039
5 Willie Mays 1008
6 Mel Ott 989
7 Honus Wagner 938
8 Jeff Bagwell 672
9 Joe Morgan 657
10 Eddie Mathews 652

That’s pretty good company for Bags, who is simply the best Stros player ever.

The Stros lose to the Cards 2-1 as Dotel balks in the winning run in the 10th on a dubious call by Ump Hunter Wendlestadt. I suspect that the phrase “chicken shit” is being uttered more than once in the Stros’ clubhouse this evening.
Wade Miller goes for the Stros in the Saturday afternoon game against the Cards’ former but recently struggling Astro-killer, Woody Williams.

Will Carroll is a doctor whose hobby is analyzing sports injuries. He also writes for the Baseball Prospectus and runs his own blog here. In his Baseball Propectus column today, he writes the following ominous news from the Stros:

The Astros may have completed a two-game sweep of the Cubs, but losing Andy Pettitte for any length of time would certainly be a high price to pay for that sweep. Pettitte left after four innings with elbow soreness, later clarified to be “forearm tightness.” While Pettitte insisted after the game that the pain was in a different area than the elbow injury earlier this season, his reactions on the mound were very similar. A shot of the dugout showed him rubbing not his forearm, but his elbow. Team physicians will examine Pettitte Thursday morning.

Update: In this Chronicle article, the Stros attempt to put the best face on the initial diagnosis (strained forearm) as possible, but the reality is that Pettitte has a gimpy elbow and throwing pitches only aggravates the injury. Accordingly, I expect Pettitte to go back on the disabled list again at least once and maybe more during the remainder of this season.

In this article bemoaning Andy Pettitte’s latest injury, the Chronicle’s John Lopez rues the lack of viable alternatives to replace Pettitte in the Stros’ rotation and makes the following observation:

Carlos Hernandez, whom the Astros had hoped to be progressing by this point of the season to become an option, has not distinguished himself at Class AAA New Orleans.

Having followed Hernandez‘s progress at AAA New Orleans while recovering from labrum surgery, Lopez’s observation surprised me. So, I took another look at Hernandez’s current statistics.
While operating under a strict pitch count, Hernandez is 4-0 in nine starts, has an ERA of 2.54, has struck out 26 in 51 innings, and has given up only 18 walks. In other words, Hernandez’s stat line is as good as any pitcher on the Astros staff right now and better than most.
Inasmuch as Hernandez is still building arm strength, his velocity has not yet returned completely, and that is reflected in his relatively low strikeout totals. However, Lopez’s suggestion that Hernandez is not doing well at New Orleans reflects that he didn’t check the facts. This is a common characteristic of the Chronicle baseball writers, best reflected in their unquestioning support of such abysmal players as Brad Ausmus and Jose Vizcaino, and their oblivious acceptance of manager Jimy Williams‘ dubious decisions.

Andy Pettitte strained his left forearm after pitching four innings, but the Stros’ recently maligned bullpen pitched well as the Stros beat the Cubs for the second straight night at the Juice Box, 7-3. Pettitte gave up a run on two hits, and the Cubs were only able to muster two runs off of one (Mike Gallo) of the Astros’ five relievers. Miceli, Lidge and Dotel were throwing smoke in the last three innings as they struck out six of the last nine Cub batters in the game. The Stros listed Pettitte as day-to-day, but with that type of injury, I would be surprised if he doesn’t miss a start to two.
Lance Berkman hit his seventh yak in the last nine games, and both of the Jeffs — Kent and Bags — also cranked dingers. The Stros raked Greg Maddux hard as it is starting to look like Maddux — who, along with Roger Clemens, is one of the best pitchers of his generation — is going to have a hard time maintaining a spot in the Cubs rotation when all of their flamethrowers come off of the disabled list.
The Stros take a day off on Thursday and then begin a three game weekend series at the Juice Box with the Cards on Friday night behind Clemens. The Stros are 26-20 and a game behind the Reds in the NL Central race.