What a great trade for Cuellar and Astros series review

There some signs to his upcoming stardom. Like the year we won the World Series in 1966. Off in Houston was a Cuban left-hander named Mike Cuellar. He won just 12 games for the Astros but his ERA was a sparkling 2.22. On June 25, the Astros were in the Astrodome and the Cardinals were in town. The great Lou Brock struck out 3 times that night. Cuellar struck out 15 that evening and went home with a 3-2 win.

Put down December 4, 1968 as a great day in Orioles history. And give super scout Jim Russo great credit. He was the one bragging about Houston’s Cuellar. So the Orioles traded fading outfielder Curt Blefary (1965 AL Rookie of the Year) to Houston for Cuellar. We also got a few prospects who never panned out. Also gave away John Mason. Who? Yes, that’s right.

It was an incredible one-sided deal. Exactly one year later, the Astros realized they had been swindled and dealt Blefary back to the American League. And all Cuellar did for Baltimore was win 23 games and help bring us back to the World Series.

The late Cuellar won 144 games in an Orioles uniform. He pitched in three World Series. He pitched the clinching game in the 1970 World Series. He hit a grand slam homer in the American League playoffs. He was wonderful. Yes, we won that trade with Houston hands down.

It was time for another series with the lowly Astros. And for the first two games of the series, we forgot how to hit the baseball. One run a game won’t win many games. Last Thursday’s game had us in the game as Nellie Cruz singled in a run. It was 1-1 until the hot George Springer cracked a two-run homer. We wasted a strong effort from Ubaldo Jimenez.

I didn’t even realize it but the Astros were a hot club coming into this four-game tilt. They had won 7 games in a row and on Friday again shut down our offense with a 2-1 win. Adam Jones and JJ Hardy combined for our only run. Miguel Gonzalez was the tough-luck loser.

In a sense we lost to the two weakest Astros pitchers. When it was time for their better pitchers to take their turns, we hit them. Cruz hit his 20th homer in the 4-1 win on Saturday. It wasn’t exactly a romantic win as two runs came after bases loaded walks.

The month of June opened up in the series finale on Sunday. And in the sixth inning, we scored as many runs as we had the whole series. The big blow? The Manny Machado grand slam homer. We got rare homer from the speedster David Lough. Nine runs went up on the board. Wei-Yin Chen got the easy win in the 9-4 decision.

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Brian Hradsky

The owner of MSB, I created this website while in college and it has never died.

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