Associated Press Sports
updated 5:53 p.m. ET April 28, 2013
BOSTON (AP) - The young Houston Astros are hoping they can grow up quickly.
Losing for the 18th time in 25 games to start their inaugural season in the American League, the Astros dropped a 6-1 decision to the Red Sox that completed Boston's four-game series sweep.
"We've been battling and we wanted to put a `W' up there. But we've got to put it behind us and get ready for the next day and try to end this skid," losing pitcher Bud Norris said.
"It's early though. It's a long haul. I know I've got a lot of work ahead of me. We've got to take it one game at a time, put it behind us and keep learning. We're here to put our work in. We're a young squad. We're learning."
Norris (3-3) struck out six for Houston and allowed five runs - three earned - in six innings.
After giving up a run in the first, Norris held Boston scoreless until allowing two each in the fourth and fifth. The two in the fifth were unearned after shortstop Marwin Gonzalez misplayed a grounder and threw it away for another error on the first batter.
Like almost everything this month, the Astros are just looking for any positives despite the long weekend in Fenway Park.
"We've got to. You've got to put positive rocks in your bucket," Norris said. "You can't put negative ones in there. You've got to learn from your mistakes - mental or physical. We've got to learn and get better.
"That's the learning process we know we're a part of. Once we get over that hump and turn those close games into wins, and the ball bounces our way, or we get the call, someday it will click and it'll turn it around. We know it'll happen someday."
It was the third time the Astros were swept in a series this season. They've also lost seven of their past nine games heading into a three-game series at Yankee Stadium on Monday night.
"It's over. A new game tomorrow and that's all you can focus on," outfielder Rick Ankiel said. "You just hope that everybody's learning when you're out there and going through different situations, whether it be a feel or a situation mentally, you just hope everybody is learning something."
John Lackey returned from the disabled list and pitched six solid innings, David Ortiz drove in two runs and the Red Sox matched a team record with their 18th win in April.
Lackey (1-1) missed all of last season recovering from Tommy John surgery and went on the DL after leaving his first start this year with a strained right biceps. He allowed five hits, struck out four and walked two. The two walks came with two outs in the first and cost Lackey his only run.
Stephen Drew hit a two-run triple and Ortiz had two hits, extending his hitting streak to 20 games going back to last season. Ortiz has 11 RBIs and is batting .516 in eight games since returning to the lineup last weekend.
Houston left nine runners on base and was 2 for 9 with runners in scoring position on Sunday. The Astros were just 5 for 38 in the series.
Ronny Cedeno drove in Houston's only run with a single in the first after Lackey had walked Jason Castro and Carlos Pena with two outs.
The Astros loaded the bases with one out in the sixth on consecutive singles by Castro, Pena and Cedeno, but Lackey got himself out of the jam by striking out Fernando Martinez and getting Matt Dominguez to ground into a fielder's choice.
The Red Sox also left the bases loaded in the first after Ortiz's RBI single scored Daniel Nava, who doubled with one out.
The missed opportunity didn't hurt Boston as the Red Sox scored twice in both the fourth and fifth innings.
Mike Napoli led off the fourth with a blooper down the right field line and tried to stretch into a double, but former pitcher Rick Ankiel's throw reached second well before Napoli and shortstop Gonzalez made the tag for the out.
The Red Sox still got two runs in the inning. Mike Carp and Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit back-to-back singles and scored easily when Drew - batting .136 coming in - tripled down the right field line and the Red Sox took their first lead at 3-1.
In the fifth, Gonzalez bobbled a grounder by Nava and his hurried throw sailed well over first baseman Pena, then the Boston dugout. The mistakes were costly when Dustin Pedroia drove in Nava with a double. Carp added a two-out double to score Pedroia for a 5-1 lead.
NOTES: The Astros are 2-11 against Boston all time and winless in seven games at Fenway. ... Jose Altuve went 0 for 4, ending his streak of reaching base in 17 straight games. ... The series sweep is the second this season for the Red Sox, who also swept Cleveland.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
advertisement
More newsHoward delivers in Chooch's return
CSN: Carlos Ruiz returned from a 25-game suspension and Ryan Howard hit a two-run, pinch hit double that gave the Phillies a 5-1 win over the Mets and complete a three-game sweep of New York.
Tulowitzki strains shoulder in Rockies' loss
PHOENIX (AP) - Gerardo Parra tripled and scored twice, and Josh Wilson had a run-scoring double to help lead the Arizona Diamondbacks to a 4-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51695867/ns/sports-baseball/
ariana grande gonzaga lyme disease temple university palm sunday Kids Choice Awards 2013 Joe Weider
Heroku, the popular cloud platform as a service company, today announced the public launch of its Europe region. Developers will now be able to deploy their services closer to their European customers, which should result in markedly reduced latency for them. The company says it has observed performance improvements of 100ms or more per request for European end users. Heroku is built on top of Amazon’s EC2 platform, so while the company doesn’t explicitly note this in its announcement today, this means it is using Amazon’s data center in Ireland for this service. In the U.S., Heroku’s services are currently based in Amazon’s North Virginia (US-East-1) data center. Given this launch in Europe, it’s likely that Heroku is also looking into expanding its U.S. presence to more data centers across the country, too. Developers, the company says, will also be able to easily deploy more than 60 add-ons from its marketplace in this new zone. Heroku will automatically deploy these in the same region the app is running in, too. The company previously offered this service as a private beta for a small number of users, including Swedene’s TV4 and Betapond. “Deploying our app closer to our users in Heroku’s Europe region gave us a 150ms improvement in web performance. Based on this win for our users, we?re moving all of our apps to the Europe region,” TV4′s CTO Per ?str?m said in a canned statement today. Safe Harbor Coming Soon One issue for U.S. companies that want to bring cloud-based services to Europe is the fact that they have to comply with the EU’s privacy protection laws, which tend to be a bit more strict than similar laws in the U.S. The EU?s Directive on Data Protection prohibits the transfer of personal data to non-European Union countries that don’t meet its privacy protection standard. To ensure that this won’t hinder cloud-based services too much, however, Europe allows U.S. companies to be certified to ensure that their privacy policies are compliant with European regulations. Heroku says it is “not yet a registered participant in the Safe Harbor program,” but the company has “laid the groundwork for becoming Safe Harbor certified and expect to have it soon.” Until then, developers have to assume that some of their data will be stored in – or pass through – Heroku’s U.S. data centers.