Brewers 5, Astros 3, 10 innings
W: Parra (1-3)
L: Rodriguez (1-8)
Smells like a landfill of tires on fire, doesn’t it? Maybe those dozens at the ballpark are right after all. Maybe it isn’t frontrunning, maybe it’s the inability to keep watching the bright lights of shit on fire every night that drives them away.
I used to know a guy who worked press for TDCJ. The glamour part of his job was that he was one of the state’s witnesses to every execution, and then he got to talk to the press afterward. He’d get to answer those great questions like, “Did he seem to be in pain?” and “Did he struggle?” night after night after night. I don’t remember how many he saw, but it was in the multiple hundreds. Something like that changes a man, and he wasn’t immune. He took a few years off in West Texas, crawled inside a bottle and tried to kill his demons with a different fire.
Neither are we as fans, immune to the chemical burn that has been applied to this once heroic franchise. Yeah, they’re taking the right steps but God, we’re in a painful place right now, watching this shitty group of broken toys and cracked mirrors stumblefucking their way through another Season in Hell.
How long, O Lord, how long?
The papers have started to seize on Mills’ dismissal as an unannounced fait accompli. Fine, whatever. He was always armed like Barney Fife, and if you only give your bank dick one bullet, how’s he supposed to stop the robbery? Sure, we question his moves from time to time but he’s not Plato and this isn’t the Dawn of Reason going on here, this is a AAA team lurching around in hysteria like monkeys in an electrified cage. Mills could be Machiavelli and Midas in one and it wouldn’t make any difference with this smoking wreck.
It’s difficult to come to the conclusion that we’re in the petri dish stage, waiting to see if any of these cultures actually grow into something useful, and not some mutant half-players that can never be complete major leaguers. Marking time on a calendar is a trying experience and that’s where we seem to find ourselves, waiting out a slowly moving clock in the hopes that whatever the hell is in the oven actually turns out to be good. I’m not looking forward to another Thanksgiving of Hungry Man Dinners, even if they do come with that fruity goo for dessert.
Lyles was actually good today, maybe the best start he’s had. Through seven, he only gave up six hits and two runs. He found a way to battle out of two real tough situations, very similar to those that had doomed earlier starts this year.
Greinke went three as a surprise opener, and he wasn’t sharp at all. The Astros touched him for three before he gave way to Marco Estrada, et al. That group no-hit the home nine for six innings afterward, continuing a stretch of futility that has run for more than a month. The early season’s approach at the plate is gone now, deteriorating into something that resembles the cast from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The bullpen, once pretty good, has also fallen into the same state of painful insanity. Three innings, four hits, three runs, five walks – it’s a wonder they can even pull off the act of suicide they do every night. It’s the only thing they can do correctly.
This is a shitty, shitty team. Yes, they’re young, but realistically they have nothing much to build on. Almost none of these players would even be reserves on any other team. The gap in talent between the Astros and other clubs is massive, and the only way that worm is going to turn is by letting the fucker die and then waiting for the rebirth. It isn’t going to be soon, and it isn’t going to be pretty, and I’m not in the position anymore where I feel the need to sell it any other way.
Think you like watching public executions? The true membership of that club is tiny and damned. Pull the curtain back and take a seat, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when the blood starts to splash back.