Astros vs. Braves Series Preview: The Battle for the Basement in the NL

In football, matchups like this are called "The Toilet Bowl." In baseball we know that it's still early in the season and there is time to turn things around, though, turning things around sooner rather than later would be nice. This is the perfect opportunity to turn the tables and sweep a team rather than be swept. The Astros have been struggling all season, we'll be facing starters that we do well against, we don't have to face Roy Oswalt, and there are just about as many Astros hitting poorly as there are poor hitting Braves.

Here are the pitching matchups for the series:

Friday: Tommy Hanson (1-2, 2.14 ERA) vs. Brett Myers (1-1, 3.81 ERA; 4-9, 4.52 ERA v. Atlanta)
Hanson Dominated (capitol D) the Astros in his start against them last year. Many of you will remember this game, as he went 8 strong innings and looked stronger as the game went on. He only threw 98 pitches, but Bobby decided to pull him for Rafael Soriano in the ninth, and Sori coughed up the lead and took the loss, ruining the best start of Hanson's career. We could certainly use that kind of shutout dominant performance once again, and maybe Bobby will let Tommy finish the game this time. I'd also like to see Hanson go more than 6 innings in a game, but that's a matter of him being sharp early and not running up the pitch count. No matter how deep Hanson has gone in games this year, he has yet to give up more than 2 runs in any start.

Keep the women away from Brett Myers. We beat Myers twice last year, though the second time he pitched good enough to win. We have generally gotten the best of Brett, but occasionally he can shut us down when he is on his game.

Saturday: Tim Hudson (1-1, 3.28 ERA; 2-0, 1.16 ERA v. Houston) vs. Wandy Rodriguez (1-2, 3.65 ERA; 2-1, 4.89 ERA v. Atlanta)
Hudson has done just about what we hoped he would do this year. He's limited opposing teams to 3 runs or less in each of his starts and he's thrown more innings per start than anyone else. As you can see above he's handled Houston in the past, we can only hope that trend continues.

Sunday: Derek Lowe (3-2, 5.79 ERA; 4-3, 3.57 ERA v. Houston) vs. Bud Norris (1-2, 5.60 ERA; never faced Braves)
This will be the battle of two pitchers with ERAs approaching 6.00. It really should be Derek Lowe's goal to keep the opposing team under five runs, unless our offense can somehow come alive and provide him with another DerekLoweWin.

(Thanks to Fat Dingflyer (what a name) for the pitching matchups.)