Houston Astros Are Swept Without a Fight

Scott Feldman (Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports)

Quite honestly, there is not much to say. It looked a lot like 2013 tonight. And that is not good. At the risk of overreacting, it is time for concern. Or if not full fledged concern, it should be in the beginning stages.

The Houston Astros took on the Kansas City Royals tonight in an attempt to salvage the series, but instead lost 5-1 to complete the sweep. There really is not much to say about the game, and there is no sense in giving a blow by blow account of it.

Prior to tonight, Scott Feldman could not have done any better in his first three starts. However in his fourth start of the season, and his first since his return following the passing of his father, Feldman had his struggles.

Nori Aoki got the game started with a leadoff double on which George Springer experienced another first. This time, it was not in a positive way as he had trouble with the ball in the right field corner leading to Aoki reaching third on an error. Aoki then scored on an Eric Hosmer ground out.

Feldman went on to allow five runs in total, four earned, in six innings while striking out two batters and allowing nine hits and one walk. Tonight’s performance is more along the lines of what the criticizers of Feldman’s free agent contract expected from him.

Springer did go on to make a nice diving catch later in the game, but he did again struggle at the plate. Now to be fair he did face Royals’ ace James Shields who was able to keep the entire Astros team at bay. In his second career game, Springer had another ugly infield single while going 1-4 with two strikeouts.

The Astros were not able to muster much offense against Shields as he struck out 12 batters in eight innings allowing just four hits and two walks.

In the fifth inning the Astros were able to crack the scoreboard on a sacrifice fly by Alex Presley, but there was the potential for a bigger inning. After a Chris Carter lead off walk, Matt Dominguez singled but was over zealous and careless in trying to stretch it into a double.

Anthony Bass pitched the last three innings for the Astros without incident as he was perfect while striking out one batter.