Sagging ‘Stros

Numbers crunching is agony for Gerry Hunsicker these days.

The Houston Astros’ ERA is way up. The Astros lead the league in home runs allowed. Jose Lima is in a big slump and Billy Wagner, last season’s best closer, is getting smacked.

It’s not what the Astros general manager expected when the team moved into its new home at sparkling Enron Field, where baseball his been less entertaining than the stadium’s retractable roof and vintage locomotive that steams atop a left-field wall.

Hunsicker recently did some painful research involving his embattled pitching staff and discovered that only four years in franchise history has the team ERA exceeded 4.00 for the season.

This team started the week at 5.44.

“That’s alarming to me and basically it puts a finger on the primary problem that we have,” Hunsicker said. “It’s really bizarre. To be more specific, we lead the National League in home runs allowed.”

Lima, who was fourth in the Cy Young voting last season, leads the league in home runs allowed, earned runs, and runs allowed. He entered the weekend with a career-high eight-game losing streak.

Mike Hampton, a 22-game winner last season, is now thriving with the New York Mets, further depleting the Astros rotation that has been slow to react to the short fences of Enron.

Wagner was almost unhittable last season with 38 saves in 41 opportunities. He has already blown six saves.

“Unless those numbers start to come down significantly, it doesn’t matter much what we do, we’re not going to win a lot of ball games,” Hunsicker said. “The defense has compounded that because defense and pitching have correlations.

“We can’t keep giving away four outs per inning and extra runs because of poor defense.”

Lima pitched his best game of the season on Tuesday and still lost. He refuses to wilt.

“The fans want to see me win so much,” Lima said. “I hear them say ‘we believe in you, we believe in you.’ It hurts even more when I can’t win. I think they know when Lima goes well the team goes well.”

That’s the problem. Neither Lima nor the Astros are going well.

The Astros are in last place in the NL Central. They have won three straight titles and haven’t finished lower than second in six seasons.

They’ve shown no inclination to make it four titles in a row. The Astros’ longest winning streak this season has been two games, accomplished five times.

No one is hurting more than Jeff Bagwell, who has struggled recently.

“It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty bad lately, and when the team is struggling, too, I feel the brunt of it even more,” Bagwell said. “It kills me. When I don’t produce I feel like I let the whole world down.”

Fans have been flocking to the cozy downtown stadium despite the Astros’ decline. The Astros are averaging 38,725 through 31 home games, fourth in the NL.

The Astros miss three players from last year’s team that have gone on to other teams. Derek Bell, who had an off-season with the Astros last season, joined Hampton in New York and is having an outstanding season.

Carl Everett, the Astros’ most productive offensive player a year ago, signed with the Boston Red Sox.

It’s difficult for veteran Astros like second baseman Craig Biggio to witness the team’s demise.

“We had a lot of ugly scores early on,” Biggio said. “Now, we’re playing a lot better but we still don’t have anything to show for it. All we can do is go out and keep playing.”

The Astros don’t want to admit it’s going to be a long season, but that’s beginning to look obvious.

“I think all we can do is try to go out and win a ball game,” manager Larry Dierker said. “But there’s really nothing we can do about it if the other teams keep playing well.”

Before leaving on a 10-game road trip, their longest of the season, the Astros were shut out by the Minnesota Twins, 2-0 on Thursday night, ending the major leagues’ longest current streak without being shut out at 86.

“You can go by this game or you can go two weeks back,” third baseman Ken Caminiti said. “It’s all the same. Same old questions, same old answers.”