When we started to realize the Astros possibilities on this West Coast roadtrip, we saw they weren't so bad. But this start has been good enough, all the better to forget the frustrating Sunday loss against Detroit. Many agree with us that it was the saddest lost this year (which is a lot to say if you ask me).

Well, the best thing Houston could do was giving the ball to Roy Oswalt, the reliable one. It's true this hasn't been Roy-O's best year so far, but he's always a man who inspires respect around him. He dominated the Padres tonight, pitching a complete game (nothing amazing, he's an innings-eating hurler), fanning eight and taking his fourth win this year, leveling his record.

An Ivan Rodriguez homer, a Sac-fly by Geoff Blum and a Carlos Lee single drove in the Astros runs, for a team who could beat a weak opponent, offensively speaking. A team which wasn't able to decipher Oswalt's delivery.

All of this happened in a day in which the Astros are starting to formalize the end of their relations with Brandon Backe. The Galveston-born pitcher didn't accept his demotion to the Minor Leagues, so he becomes an unrestricted Free Agent. We hope, and we are sure, he will find a new team very soon. He has the heart for it. He proved it several times here with us.

Mike Hampton is back, so the front office sends Wesley Wright to the Minors, while Cecil Cooper will use a six-man rotation. This is a quite delicate balance, because he now has many pitchers who are doing well. But they also look like a frail house of cards. You don't dare to take any piece off because it might tumble down.

You can also follow us on the Astros official Spanish-Language site, astrosdehouston.com, in our Spanish blog at lacarreraespacial.mlblogs.com and in our Twitter @rafaelrojasc

I have plenty of reasons, all of them pretty biased, to declare myself as a Felipe Paulino fan.

The young hurler has one of the best fastballs in the Astros organization. He is also the only Venezuelan pitcher standing in the MLB roster for Houston. With Fernando Nieve being sent away (and also having a great outing with the Mets), Paulino might be the last great product of the legendary Astros academy, closed this year for several reasons I still cannot fathom.

Well, after a so-so start, Paulino went on the DL. Now he's back pitching, and in such a way. He struck out 9, a personal MLB record for him, tying what seemed to be a weak Tigers lineup.

The 'Stros beat Detroit 8-1, and it was one of those games in which everything went right for them. One of those in which hope might born again, even though I don't want to rush too much into things. If we regret a lot what happened to Brandon Backe, looks like if Paulino keeps on giving us outings like this one, we can see depth within a rotation we once saw as shaky, to say the least.

Geoff Blum returns. Edwin Maysonet is down. I so regret there's no space for him in the roster as of now.

A pretty interesting day: Astros win, The Dominican-Venezuelan is back, Edwin leaves, and Giovanni Mier, the Astros Round 1 Pick for this year's draft has his first hit in the Minor Leagues... in the very first pitch. Not bad, huh?

You can also follow us on the Astros official Spanish-Language site, astrosdehouston.com, in our Spanish blog at lacarreraespacial.mlblogs.com and in our Twitter @rafaelrojasc

I have a confession to make. I'm a Linux geek.

For the past two years, I've been using the Ubuntu Linux distribution. It's a free operating system which has a lot of quality, and has supressed a lot of my frustrations with Windows (I could have gotten a Mac, but hey, I wanted something I could use in my existing computers and besides, the Apple Store is located at the Galleria in Houston. That should tell you how pricey it is).

And, during the past five seasons or so, I've also been a subscriber to MLB.TV. The ability of watching every game live in my computer no matter where I am has been quite useful to my work of writing for the Astros and baseball in general. Last year, I did a radio show with highlights and live commentary and analysis, so it was an useful tool.

The issue was trying to make MLB.TV work in Linux. So many workarounds, plugin installations, you name it. It was a lot of hard work. So hard, in fact, I ended up carrying a laptop with a dual-boot install of Windows and Linux, so I could get my MLB.TV most of the time. I'll tell ya, I did MLB.TV run in Linux almost 90% of the times. I even demonstrated it to my friends at the Astros Spanish Radio Network last year and they were very impressed, both with the Operating System and MLB.TV itself. Alex Trevino, my colleague and friend at the booth, is also a technology follower and he saw the potential instantaneously.

But I have to say, I'm part of a minority yet. That's why I was so excited when I saw that MLB.TV was ditching other technologies which limitated its growth outside the Windows OS. And they chose to go with Adobe which, despite the fact not being 100% free software, it has chosen to be available in every platform in the Sun, be Windows, Mac or Linux.

Installing Flash in Ubuntu is a breeze. You can even go to Adobe's website directly and get a .deb file for installation. And the new media player is a breeze to play with, going from a single game view to picture-in-picture, being able to watch up to four games at the same time. That's worth the price of subscription in itself. And the Flash technology makes it workable, light and fast, unlike the past Mosaic version which was good, but not good enough.

So I have to congratulate my BAM friends in making MLB.TV finally truly multi-platform. I had to write this since I had to tell you how wonderful it is, and you tend to appreciate it even more when you're in this business. Go ahead, give it a try, and tell me what you think. And now you know: if you use Linux and love baseball, now you don't have to be afraid of your MLB.TV not working.

It does. Beautifully.

It's all right. I'll admit it. It's becoming a bit old, even traumatic, to see Carlos Zambrano start a game against the Astros. Whenever "El Toro" faces Houston, he owns them. Just remember what happened last September.

And there couldn't be a better way to start this 2009 season.... Than to watch Big Z doing his thing. Against Houston. One more time. It's almost like listening to that Britney song. Which I consider almost similar to hearing nails on a chalkboard.

Let's look at it this way: It's all over. You can breathe now. It's just 1 out of 162 games.

I know what you'll tell me: Wandy this, Hampton that... our rotation, our shaky pen, whatnot.

And I understand you, trust me. I even agree with some of your thoughts.

What I might not agree on is that we can see certain trends coming out of just one ballgame. We cannot imagine what will happen to your Houston Astros from here to September out of this game. Of course, that takes a bit off the fun from Opening Day, but it is definitely unfair.

Maybe we can see certain things that, if we keep on seeing them for a while, then we should get worried.

Now, there's a lot of things yet to see: Wandy, Mike Hampton, how Ivan Rodriguez's role will be defined...

And there's a lot of time left for us to figure those things out.

The Astros have announced a press conference for tomorrow morning in Kissimee. We know two things. It's gonna be HUGE. And it's NOT Pudge.

And it's NOT Pedro Martínez either, like an article on Baseball Prospectus says. That's what Ed Wade told Alyson Footer minutes ago. Alyson said in her blog, "This is absurd. This is actually one step beyond absurd but it's too late in the evening and I'm too tired to think of what that word is".

"We have had zero conversations with Pedro. I have absolutely no idea where that is coming from.", Wade told Alyson.

So let's wait

Who would've thunk it? We were discussing last night how hard it was to get an idea regarding the catching position for th 2009 Houston Astros. On one hand, we had Humberto Quintero. You know very well how I highly regard Q, and not just because he's Venezuelan like yours truly, but because he has worked very hard to stay at the point he is right now. On the other, there's J.R. Towles, the rookie who couldn't rise to the occasion last year. So we weren't quite sure what we would get.

Today we learn that the Astros are on the way of signing none other than future Hall-of-Famer Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez. It will all depend on a physical after his performance on the World Baseball Classic ends (And I would LOVE to see him leave the WBC tonight. But that's another story...)

Rodriguez's career is too long and diverse so I won't abuse this blogging format by giving you full details about it. If this ends happily for the Astros, they would have solved a compromising situation, and what's best about it is that they didn't have to concede to spending temptations (Pudge's agent is none other than Scott Boras. You get the picture).

A veteran, reliable and highly regarded catcher, and at an irresistible price: Pudge's price tag, according to several sources including our own Alyson Footer, would be on the $1.5 million range, with yet another 1.5 million in bonuses. Now that's a bargain.

Blame it on the recession, and maybe because this was the only team which could offer him a full-time starting gig throughout the whole season. Would this be the start of a severe correction regarding baseball salaries? Who knows. What's most interesting for us is that the Astros handled this situation in the best way possible by resisting and being cost-conscious.

And that's something I'm glad to say.

Welcome once again to a new season with your Houston Astros. As always, we'll try to give you information and notes in a different way. There's one thing which I'm really glad about, and is that I won't be holding the fort all by myself this time: Besides good friends such as Thomas, Bernardo and other bloggers, we are joined by people who are known by all of you: Alyson Footer, someone who really knows her Astros, and the voice of the Houston Astros in Spanish himself, my good friend Francisco Romero.

So there'll be a little bit something for everyone this time around.

We saw Roy Oswalt last night in a game which became so painful for us, in which Venezuela was mercilessly pounded by the US offense. Roy O proved himself why he is one of the premiere starters in baseball, and that's what matters most. He won't return to Kissimmee just yet; in the meantime Carlos Lee is taking the plane back to Florida after his team Panama's elimination from the World Baseball Classic.

This is been a Spring Training quite interesting to see. And a hard one as well. We know there isn't anything more worthless than Grapefruit League scores, but it's true that it would be so much nicer to see a win every now and then at Osceola County Stadium.

I'm sure Cecil Cooper will try to energize the troops back again to see if bats start swinging the right way and things change a bit. But we know that's not the main goal.

It's all about breaking down performances and seeing which players will survive all cuts and stay in the 40-man roster. It's time to see if prospects (which there are plenty to see) can stay or they could be well-kept in the Minors for a September callup. That's a positive effect of Tejada, Lee and Oswalt being absent for the WBC if you ask me.

Are there reasons to panic yet? Not quite. Most especially if your main players are somewhere else. But it's true that, despite we know that is not what it's all about, a win every now and then would make this spring a bit more joyful.

First of all, please don't think I didn't want to write while the Astros were on a roll. Time was short, duties were plenty. The Astros were breaking through, or arrasando, like the jingle from the Spanish radio network says. Ty Wigginton was smashing the ball, Lance Berkman followed suit. Wandy Rodriguez was pitching beautifully.

Things are rather different today. When things were looking great, and the Wild Card was so close you could almost taste it, everything started to complicate.

I should put things into its proper context. What comes next should be inferred and read as my personal opinion, and nothing else. And I think those living in Houston, or with relatives and friends living there, will know what I'm talking about.

Hurricane Ike was something that really got all of us in our toes. We all had to be cautious, take emergency measures. This weekend was a very trying moment for all of us. Many people could not get in touch with each other. Friends, family, you name it. Try contacting anyone living in Houston if you are abroad. Initially was a nightmare. Many of our usual readers cannot get in touch with us because they have no power and they will have to wait for days until they get it back.

And I won't even talk about those living or with relatives in the Galveston area.

Many Astros players had no idea of the whereabouts of many loved ones before flying to Milwaukee. Could their minds be set for playing baseball? Hardly. We know they are professional players, but they're no robots either. And you and I have seen all throughout this season is that they have a lot of heart for dealing with obstacles.

But this was something definitely bigger than anything else they have ever faced. I don't know how they could have taken their minds off Ike and into baseball. Your correspondent had a very hard time trying to do just that. Tired, burned out and with a lot of things in their minds, Astros players went to Miller Park. Many did not know what had happened to those close to them. And they had to play ball.

What did they find? Carlos Zambrano pitching at the top of his game, no-hit the 'Stros, something quite noteworthy and remarkable nonetheless. After that, they found a Ted Lilly who also tied them up at ease. Off to Miami. Roy Oswalt, who had been Mr. Consistency itself, wasn't consistent at all.

Getting the Wild Card spot is not impossible after this, but it is a lot harder than it was on Saturday. I can't blame the players, I really can't. I don't want to point fingers at anyone. I don't know if this was the best alternative in dealing with the logistical nightmare that represents rescheduling a MLB game. I don't know if they could have waited 24 more hours.

All I know that today the Astros have to avoid demoralizing themselves, by all means possible. They have a lot of heart to overcome this. Time, well, that's another story.

As we all know by now, Hurricane Ike left a terrible mark on the Houston Area. Despite the fact damages are less than originally expected, they're important enough so they're changing everyone's plans substantially. Most areas are without electric power, authorities are advising residents to boil water. Debris and broken glasses are everywhere to be found in the Downtown area, that's why authorities advise people not to go to that area until further notice.

Minute Maid Park was especially built for resisting severe weather. I'm pleased to say that it performed beautifully under those conditions. Astros Business President Pam Gardner told media that the ballpark had only minor damages but none to the building's core and structure.

This is pleasant to know not just because of the fact baseball can be played there as soon as conditions on the surrounding areas allow it, but because many Astros employees spent the night in the ballpark looking to stay safe under Hurricane Ike. Some others were with their families at their residences. To all of them my word of appreciation and my thoughts and prayers are with them at all times.

Despite the fact Minute Maid Park is almost on top-notch condition, this is not the only requirement for baseball to be reassumed. That's why Major League Baseball and the Astros were looking for alternatives so they can play the crucial series against the Chicago Cubs. Because holding a sporting event in Downtown Houston is almost a ludicrous thought at the moment, and the threat to fans' safety, two games will be played at Milwaukee's Miller Park. Those games will be held Sunday and Monday. The final game would be played only if it has playoff implications.

Fans with tickets to those games are advised to keep them until the Astros inform of ways how those tickets can be reimbursed.

Personally, and despite the fact the Astros are in the midst of a wild and exciting Wild Card race, my mind has been a bit away from baseball, concerned with the fate of all my friends and coworkers in Houston. I hope we can meet again at Minute Maid Park very, very soon.