41 year old Roger Clemens threw 7 one hit innings in his first start as a Houston Astro in leading the ‘Stros to a 10-1 mangling of the San Francisco Giants. Here is the NY Times article on the game and Clemens’ pre-game telephone conference with Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner.
Clemens — who is the best pitcher of his generation and one of the best of all-time — turned in a dominating performance as he struck out nine and even chipped in with a hit (I think it was like the fifth hit of his career; he’s been an American League pitcher for a long time). Bags, Hidalgo, and Kent hammered homers, and Biggio doubled twice and scored twice. The 10 runs felt good after the Stros struggled to score in the first two games of the series.
The Stros now hit the road for a week as they play in Milwaukee and St. Louis. They return to Minute Maid on Friday, April 16th against the Brew Crew.

The ‘Stros dropped the second game of the opening series of the season to the Giants on Tuesday night, 7-5. Frankly, the warning signs for this team are already glaring after only two games.
Andy Pettitte was cruising through 3 and 2/3rd’s innings when he walked Marquis Grissom (not a bad move; Grissom can only hit lefties) to load the bases to get to the light-hitting Neifi Perez. This is how Baseball Prospectus 2004 describes Perez:

Is Neifi Perez the worst hitter of all-time? We won’t go into the detailed arguments here, but he has a case, along with Hal Lanier and a few others. He’s still an excellent fielder, and he might be able to help a team if he’s used mostly as a late inning defensive sub. But regardless of how good a fielder he is, the thought of Neifi Perez breaking camp as the starting San Francisco shortop should be terrifying to Giants fans.

Perez promptly doubled, driving in all three runs. Then, two innings later, he whacks Pettitte again by doubling off of Tal’s Hill in center to drive in another run. So, the story line of this game is that Pettitte made Perez look like A-Rod. At least for one game.
In the meantime, Jimy (“I like veterans”) Williams has four promising young sluggers on this team who are capable of being regular players (Lance Berkman, Richard Hidalgo, Morgan Ensberg, and Jason Lane). The rest are either formerly good hitters in various states of decline (Biggio, Bagwell, and Kent), one below average hitter who has the potential to be average (Adam Everett) and one horrible hitter (Brad Ausmus).
In tonight’s game, Williams played two (Berkman and Hidalgo) of his four promising hitters. This team simply does not hit well enough to score sufficient runs without regular contributions from its best hitters. A good case can be made that Williams inexplicable platooning last season of the emerging slugger Ensberg with the below average veteran Geoff Blum may have cost the Astros the Central Division Pennant (which they lost by one game to the Cubs). If Williams continues that same trend this season by insisting on platooning Ensberg with the newly-acquired Mike Lamb, and failing at least to platoon the promising Lane in centerfield with the fading Biggio, then Astros GM Gerry Hunsiker needs to give Williams a pink slip quickly. Williams just may be that “baseball man” who is a good coach, but is overmatched as a manager.