That’s right.  We suck.  Get it out of your system, assholes.  We have the worst record in all of MLB.  Not a single Astros farm team has a winning record, either.  Go ahead – name our best player.  Better yet – just name two players.  Didn’t think you could.  The Astros suck and there’s not a damn thing that’s going to change that in the near future.

You know why this doesn’t bother me?  Because even though the Astros suck, I’m still not a fucking Cubs fan.  And I can fall fast asleep each night knowing that.

This Astros team is putting together a historically bad season, but you have a historically bad TEAM.  See the difference?  I go to games to watch baseball – you go to get slobbering drunk, just to find the courage to hit on the three-toothed diner hag sitting in the two seats next to you.  My team’s greens crew knows how to keep the weeds from climbing the outfield walls – something that IMPROVES your stadium.  Only the idiots at Astros games throw back homerun balls – EVERYBODY at Wrigley throws them back.

I don’t worship the seventh inning stretch, either.  Sure, my ears bleed every time I hear Deep in the Heart of Texas, but at least I don’t have to endure fucking Snooki or Trump or whoever passes as someone of importance in your puny little minds butchering an already tired song.

And finally, but most importantly, I’m not a loser, lovable or otherwise.

Enjoy being second to last this year.  I’m sure you’re used to it by now.

Cubs @ Astros Preview

All You Care About Is What Time the Games Start and Who Is Pitching

Monday 7:05pm, MMPUS

Rodrigo Lopez (3-3, 4.78) vs Henry Sosa (0-1, 6.00)

Tuesday 7:05pm, MMPUS

Ryan Dumpster (10-8), 4.70) vs Brett Myers (3-12, 4.71)

Wednesday 1:05pm, MMPUS

Casey Coleman (2-4, 7.23) vs TBD (0-0, 0.00)

Promotions

Basically every game is like $5 now.

Injuries

Arias, Castro and Lyon get to ignore the rest of the season.  Del Rosario might come back in September.  Shafer is due at the end of the week.

Cashner, Mateo and Schlitter are out for awhile.  Zambrano (sandy vagina) is out for his career.

News & Notes

Sorry for the short post, hopefully JaneDoe can fill in a few blanks from her recent trip to Chicago soon.

Oh, and FUCK THE CUBS!

Everybody seems to wonder what it’s like down here

I gotta get away from this day-to-day running around,

Everybody knows this is nowhere.

My friends.  My parents.  My wife.  Co-workers.  Cousins.  Collection agents.  All of them, without exception, ask me the same question:  Why do you keep watching this awful team?  It’s a difficult question to answer, if you try to be honest.  They expect the “I’ve always been an Astros fan” or “It’s still baseball” quips, but in truth it’s not all that.  It can’t be.  They really want to know what it’s like to follow such a historically inept team.  Because they all jumped ship April 2^nd.

The honest answer?  It sucks.  Big, hairy, sweaty, smelly, steamy, pimply donkey balls.  What was once a nightly source of pride and excitement is now a black hole of disappointment and frustration.  Even worse – I now expect the Astros to lose each and every game they play.  And I’m right 68% of the time.  It’s like throwing a heavy object in the air and saying aloud, “that will come down.”  It’s neither prescient nor impressive.  It just sucks.

The bullpen could implode.  The offense could disappear.  JA Happ could pitch.  It’s the same shit, different pile.  But if you stare at that steaming pile of shit long enough, look past the undigested corn bits and beer snakes,  you’ll see something else.  Hope.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Hope is all around, actually.  There’s the hope you see in the field and in the batter’s box.  Hope on the faces of the rookies who get called up unexpectedly.   Hope in the new owner, his new management team.  Hope that Pam won’t cock-block a legitimate baseball transaction.  And the hope that these trades, these rookies, these fresh faces all pan out.

I know that by the time the Astros are in contention again my son will be watching alongside me, cheering for his team.  I’m happy that his first jersey won’t have “Pence” stitched on the back.  Instead, it’ll be Altuve or Singleton or Springer.  A Cosart bobblehead.  A Folty poster.  A Wallace cheese grater.

When that happens, and it will dammit, I’ll be able to point back at the garbage-pail kids who played in the 2011 season and smile.  And I’ll be able to talk about it with you idiots.  We watched when the outcomes were predetermined.  When excitement came from trading away the team’s best players.  When youthful mishaps and errant base-running were discarded as aggressive play, growth pains.  We were there for rock bottom.  And we still watched.

The Astros, a team that crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.  The Astros, headed for the Playoffs.

In 2015.

Astros vs Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks are doing their best to keep pace with Jeff Keppinger and the Giants.  They sit just a half game back in the standings, and you know they’re keying in on this series to take a step up.

Projected Starters

Monday, 8:40pm, Poolside

Wandy Rodriguez (7-8, 3.69) vs. Daniel Hudson (11-7, 3.67)

Hudson is coming off an eight-inning, one-run outing vs Lincecum and the Giants last Tuesday, and he’s one of the bright young pitchers that’s emerged in MLB in the past year or so.  He’s had limited exposure to the current Astros lineup, which doesn’t say much.  He hasn’t pitched in the Texas League this year, so what can you expect?  Of the few who have seen him, Angel leads the way with a 2/3 1 RBI performance.  Carlos is the biggest goat at 1/6.

I can’t say much about Wandy that you don’t already know.  He’s every bit as good of a pitcher as Hudson, but at this point he’s bringing a sciv to a nuclear war.

Tuesday, 8:40pm, Dry Heat

Jordan Lyles (1-6, 4.36) vs Jason Marquis (8-6, 4.33)

Marquis looks like a douch-ier Mark Cuban.  He was a National until last week, and he celebrated joining a contending team by allowing seven runs in four innings last Wednesday.  Current Astros hit him pretty well, with Carlos (.405, 4 hr, 13 rbi) and JasonM (.615, 1 hr, 4 RBI) paving the way.  Barmes (0-11) and Angel (1-6) couldn’t hit a broad side of a black barn.

Lyles is fresh off of his first MLB win.  The only Diamondback he’s faced is Jason Marquis, who’s 0-3.  Process of elimination tells me Lyles still took the loss.

Wednesday, 8:40pm, Bullshit Time Zone

Brett Myers (3-12, 4.76) vs. Josh Collmenter (6-7, 3.58)

The Dodgers whooped up on Collmenter last Friday, tagging him for six runs in 2.1 innings.  He’s lost his last three and could be pitching to stay in the rotation.  I bet he’ll lock down that spot this week.  The Astros, collectively, have two hits against him – by guys who are now in AAA (Wallace, Happ).

If you exclude Myers’ last start vs the Brewers (6 IP, 5 ER), he’s been pitching fairly well lately (3 or fewer runs in five games).  There’s still a chance he’ll get traded this year, so he may be pitching to impress a contender.

Thursday, 8:40pm, Not-So-Getaway-Day

TBD (0-0, 0.00) vs Joe Saunders (8-9, 3.61)

Saunders has been pretty salty this year.  In his last 10 games, he’s allowed more than three runs once – last week vs the Dodgers (4).  Carlos knocks him around pretty well (.364, 1 RBI), nobody else has many at bats.

TBD sucks.

Promotions

Not a damn thing.

Injuries

Arizona – Blum (pinky), Castillo (shoulder) and Gutierrez (shoulder) are on the 15-day.  Drew is out for the year for being an asshole who hits on my friend’s wife while he’s standing beside her.

Houston – Arias and Lyon are out for the year.  Castro might be back for the death rattle.  Del Rosario should be back at the end of August.  New Astro Jordan Schafer is due August 20.

What to Watch For

Altuve, Martinez, Lyles, Barmes, Wandy, Shuck.  Or for shits and giggles.

I don’t get much sleep.  Didn’t get a lot before I had kids, get even less now.  It’s not for worry or stress or any physical ailment – I just don’t need more than five hours to operate properly.  And if I don’t need all that sleep, why waste several hours a day with my eyes shut?  I can use that precious alone time to take classes or exercise or clean the house.  Or I could watch late night television.

Late night television has evolved from the spray-on hair and Chuck Norris ab-machine infomercials.  Maybe “evolved” isn’t the right word – that implies progress.  I’ll use “expanded” instead, that’s better.  You can still find obnoxious people hawking their wares on many channels – but there’s now a whole new spectrum of idiocy being broadcast to insomniacs and late-night baby-feeders.

Do you like cake?  Of course you do – everybody likes cake!  Guess what – there are no less than 45 reality cake-making shows to watch.

How about truckers – like them too?  Great!  Check out Ice Swamp Truckers or Llama Bean Haulers or whatever Noun Noun Professionals cable television has discovered in the last two weeks.

I got really excited the other night when I came across what I thought to be a multi-part documentary on the horrors of playing shortstop for the 2007 Astros.  I was envisioning in-depth interviews with Adam Everrett and Carlos Lee, but it turned out to be some really intense Alaskan crab-fishing show.

Anyway, I get tired of all that shit, and unless the Astros are on the West Coast my options are essentially poker or alphabetic cop show reruns.  So I started recording Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations reruns.  It’s an interesting program, and it’s cool to see new places and follow the natives’ customs.  I’ve been a fan for a while.

The other night I watched the Namibia special.  I won’t butcher Namibia’s culture or history by pretending I learned something about either.  It’s in Africa, that’s about all I know.  At some point, Bourdain flies out to literal BFE to hang out with a small tribe of Bushmen.  They wear loincloths and live off the land and eat anything they can hunt or gather – like the wild warthog they killed that day.

Bourdain describes it as the worst meal he’s ever had in his life, and I believe him.  The warthog head was delicately prepared by hacking it off and shoving it into an ash pile for a couple hours.  The other parts – limbs, stomach, heart, etc – eaten al dente.  And the delicacy – the part generously offered to the lanky visitor – was the rectum, shit barely squeezed out.  Bourdain graciously swallows all of it and thanks the tribesmen for their hospitality – but the expression on his face betrays his words.  He’s clearly disgusted.  He’s having to ingest something foreign and raw, and there’s nothing he can do about it.  He wants to get the hell out of the desert and back to reality.  He feels…just like Astros fans feel this season, staring up at the Pirates in the standings.  It’s like eating unwashed, lukewarm pig rectum, shit barely squeezed out.

But hey, good for them. Sure, they’re dirty.  Yes, they’re behind the times.  And smelly.  And toothless.  They talk funny, too.  But it’s difficult – even tacky – to hold it against them.  It’s nice to see such an impoverished people enjoy their feast.  Good for the Pirates.

Projected Starters

Tuesday, June 14.  7:05pm @ MMPUS

Jeff Karstens (3-4, 2.94) vs. Bud Norris (4-4, 3.67)

Karstens is a Red Raider, which means he’s one of the few who can count Pittsburgh as a hometown upgrade.  He’s been pretty salty his last two starts, going seven strong against both the Phils and the DBags.  He doesn’t strike out a lot of batters, but he has only seven walks on the season (54.1 IP).  He hasn’t faced the Astros yet this season.

The Norris took a no-no into the 7^th vs the Turds last week and he’s won his last two.  He took the loss to the Pyroots on May 7, but that was after a 7IP, 3ER, 9K line.  This matchup looks to be a pretty darn good one.

Wednesday, June 15.  7:05pm @ MMPUS

Charlie Morton (6-3, 3.08) vs. J.A.H.A.P.P. (3-8, 5.04)

Morton grew up in a large family on the outskirts of Flemington, NJ.  He was the youngest of eight brothers and often overlooked as a child.  The older seven were a tight-knit group and rambunctious – little Charlie just got in the way.  So he spent most of his time watching Spanish novellas on the old black-and-white in the storeroom of his father’s hardware shop (Charlie’s father, Ignacio, thought the women were beautiful).  Charlie loved the garish clothes the actors wore and vowed, at the age of nine, to be a seamstress when he grows up.  It’s a dream he carries to this day, and his locker is often draped with bright pink and turquoise and yellow linens – a testament to a childhood fantasy that will come true some day.  Some day.

Jay Happ (ahhh, much better) got roughed up the Jakes last week, but the bullpen allowed two or three of those.  He got roughed up the week before vs the Padres, and I’ll assume the ‘pen fucked him there, too.  Ummm, other than that he’s been ok, I guess.  Hell, you watch the games, I can’t sugar-coat everything, I don’t want to lose credibility.

Thursday, June 16.  1:05pm @ MMPUS.

James McDonald (4-4, 4.80) vs. Jordan Lyles (0-1, 4.15)

McDonald threw six scoreless vs the Astros in May, so he’s due to get lit up.  At one point his ERA was over 10, but he’s slowly worked it back down to respectability.  Shit, I’m just looking at a stat sheet.  I see a lot of sixes and a lot of twos.  Put it this way – he’s not Cliff Lee and he’s not Brandon Lyon.  Could go either way.

Lyles makes his fourth start and he’s done pretty well for a 20-year-old.  Think back to when you were 20.  You weren’t doing this.  I sure as hell wasn’t.

Injuries

Pirates – Alvarez, Beimel, Crotta, Doumit, Harrison, Hart, Meek, Ohlendorf, Pearce, Snyder.  Masturbation joke.

Astros – Arias, Castro, Q.  That’s it??  Really?

Promotions

Price Matters for all three.  9 Inning Lunch Break on Thursday.  Meh.

Odds & Ends

Fuck the AL.  We ain’t goin’ and you can’t make us.

It’s a question commonly paired with major historical events.   Where were you on September 11, 2001?  How about January 28, 1986? Or November 22, 1963?  July 21, 1969?  Hell, one of us can even remember April 14, 1865.

We all have these personal memories of largely shared events.  They’re snapshots of history – ways to remember innocence lost or enlightenment won.  The kind of stuff Toby Keith writes songs about.

So where were you today?

Did you hear it on the radio on the drive to work?  To school?  Did a friend tell you?  Or did you stay up late last night, hoping for confirmation?  If you’re like me, you’ve probably clicked ‘refresh’ a thousand times in the last 12 hours, eagerly lapping up every drop of information.

I was the second person to find out – in the world.  Yes, me.  I knew before Obama.  I’ll give you the scoop.  So grab a chair, shut off your phone and set your brains to ‘remember.’

It’s true: Ebby Calvin is writing the Reds preview.

I’ll wait for you to change your pants.  Remember to breathe.  It’s ok, news like this can take a while to sink in.  You ok?  Good.  Now onto the

Houston Astros (11-17) vs Cincinnati Reds (14-14) Series Preview

Projected Starters

Monday, May 5, 2011

6:10pm CST, Great American Smallpark

J.A. Happ (1-4, 6.35) vs Mike Leake (3-0, 4.40)

J.A. Happ’s a lot of things, but at least he’s not a thief.  Which is what Mike Leake is.  A dirty, rotten, shit-for-brains thief.  He’s also a pretty good pitcher, even though he’s a Red and a thief.  He’s gone seven innings in each of his last two starts, the most recent of which he struck out 12 Brewers.  But hey, Norris struck out 11 Brewers yesterday, and Norris isn’t a dirty, rotten, shit-for-brains thief who eats Skyline Chili for breakfast.  So Norris > Leake.  And I think we can all live with that.

Happ hasn’t handled himself heroically, hence his high hearned-hrun-haverage.  He dominated the Reds April 5, giving up only seven runs in four innings.  And he’s lost his last three.  So he’s got that going for him, which is nice.  But he’s an Astro, and even though I don’t know where to find his splits against current Reds hitters, I can confidently assume they all hit under .100 against him with no home runs and no RBIs.  Those seven runs in April were all unearned, thanks to seven four-base errors in RF by Blinky.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

6:10pm, CST

Aneury Rodriguez (0-0, 6.75) vs. Sam LeCure (0-1, 4.57)

I’ve never been a Cure fan, and I sure as hell wouldn’t like them more if they were French, so fuck Sam LeCure.  This looks to be his last start before Johnny Cueto and Homer Bailey return to the roster, so once again, fuck Sam LeCure.

The Aneurysm (see what I did there?) is taking over for The Jheri-Curled-One, after Figueroa couldn’t find his ass with two hands and a flashlight.  This’ll be Aneury’s first start of the season, after which he’ll change his name to Ezequiel Astacio for consistency’s sake.  Because really, what will Milo call him?  Aneury-ie?

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

11:35am, CST

Brett Myers (1-1, 3.72) vs Travis Wood (1-3, 6.82)

In Wood’s last start, he gave up seven runs in less than four innings against the Marlins, so he’s hot right now.  This looks to be his last start before Johnny Cueto and Homer Bailey return to the roster, so once again, fuck Sam LeCure.  I mean Travis Wood.  Fuck Travis Wood.

Myers continues to throw six or more innings in each of his starts, despite recently giving up three solo taters to the Brewers for his first loss.  But Myers’ performance is hardly graded by his win/loss record.  His job is to keep the Astros in the game for as long as possible, then let the bullpen fuck it up.  So far, so good.

Injury Report

Astros

Arias is due back in May, which means he’ll be back in September.  It just wouldn’t feel right with him healthy.

Castro’s still hobbling around on crutches.

Keppinger will be ready to punish some weak-ass shit later this month.

Carlos is day-to-day after running into the forcefield surrounding Angel Sanchez.

Wilton Lopez is due back any day.

J-Mike (hate that nickname) is rehabbing his dislocated left shoulder, due back mid May.

Shiteaters

Jose Arredondo (right shoulder) is on a minor league assignment, and thank God for that, because who knows what he’d do to the Astros.  Seriously, does anybody know?  No fucking clue who Jose Arredondo is.

Homer Bailey (right shoulder) will be back on May 10.

Jared Burton (right shoulder) is out for the year.  Don’t care.

Johnny Cueto (right shoulder) is due back soon.

Fred Lewis (right oblique) might be back for this series.

Scott Rolen (left shoulder) will be back mid-May.  Apparently he was showing off his ambidextrous motion to the rest of the circle jerk above.

Juan Fransisco (still not in playing shape) is a fat ass.

Promotions

Fucking nothing, except for Wednesday, when it’s Tri-State Centers for Sight Senior Citizen Specials.  There’s a JimR joke in there somewhere, I just know it.

In Other News

Some terrorist guy died.  You heard it here first.