beer and Cards

The Astros come home today after Craig Biggio remained unplunked by the Brewers in last night's 8-5 win. Tonight the Cardinals visit Houston and send Jason Marquis to the mound. Marquis has hit a batter in each of his last 2 starts, and is up to 27 hit batters for his career, but he has not yet hit Craig Biggio with a pitch. A plunk today for Biggio would be his first ever on May 3rd.

In other news, as near as I can tell, Jason Kendall charged the mound last night when John Lackey refused to hit him with a pitch. Kendall said Lackey took exception to his batting stance and made some comments to him on the subject. Kendall was quoted after the game saying "I can't repeat it, but I'm not going to let anybody talk to me like that," and I can only assume the rest of that sentence was "instead of hitting me with a pitch".
Lackey said of the incident "He stuck his elbow guard out over the plate and I told him not to. He had a problem with it, and he came out and got me. He has a right to do that, and I'm totally cool with it." Pitchers are funny. I guess Lackey would rather have a guy charge the mound than crowd the plate, and he'd rather get them both eject than pitch to a guy with .224 batting average. But at least Lackey is cool with it.