W: Old Man Westbrook
L: Lucas the Lad

Contributed by Reuben

Lucas Harrell has been remarkably consistent in his inconsistency this season, hasn’t he? He’s either great, or he’s not and completely implodes and melts down in an enormous ball of wildness, frustration, and rage. Unfortunately the Astros got the latter result Tuesday night, and the game was basically played and done with all in the course of one incendiary top of the 4th that included a diving catch attempt that resulted in a mild concussion for Justin Maxwell. Hopefully he is alright.

But there were some positives for the evening!

-Astros pitchers struck out 14 batters! The cardinal pitchers sucked by comparison of that one statistic!

-Matty D hit another Dinger, which also happened to break up a no-hitter in the 6th inning.

-Brett Wallace announced his return from Triple-A with authority, hitting a 2-run triple and striking out 0 fucking times.

-Marc Krauss notched his first big-league hit.

-The score will reset itself to 0-0 for the start of tonight’s game, where Erik Bedard will try to continue building his trade value, er, lead his team to victory against Lance Lynn, who has/had a ridiculously huge hipster beard and is 10 and fucking 1 this season.

Not in my house, anyway.

FTC 14, Astros 6

W: Samardzija (5-7)
L: Lyles (4-2)

Some of the bats showed up. 13 hits, 7 of them by Castro and Carter; 6 runs scored. Not nearly enough when a combination of bad pitches and worse fielding yields 16 hits, spread throughout the lineup as doubles, triples and home runs en route to a 14-6 humbling of the Astros.

At least three runs scored on Lyles were the direct result of misplays, leading to the inevitable hammering of the bullpen after he was lifted before the sixth, down 8-3. LeBlanc gave up a three-run homer to Sweeney, and Rizzo got a two-run job off of The Kid in the eighth.

Houston gets the day off tomorrow before hosting the 3rdinals for a pair.

Astros 1
Cubs 3

Contributed by NeilT

You grow up wild and Amish you come to a bad end, and everybody in our community knew that’s where my friend Samuel Hershberger was heading. He once showed me a picture that he kept in the hay loft of his father’s barn of a tractor. He said it was his older brother’s but I knew better. And of course he claimed to be an Astros fan.

Us Amish kids love baseball, and Papa says that until the ban back in ’95, even the baptized men played. A lot of us here in Lancaster County follow the Phillies, but the Astros? That was Samuel. He always knew better, and he always knew better faster.

Last year, he had taken off to Philadelphia and watched an Astros game on TV. He told me after he come home that he ate at this place called Hooters, where you could see most of an English woman’s bosoms. That’s just the kind of place Samuel would go. He was always wild and dangerous.

But when he got home Samuel seemed to have straightened out, like something had happened that was so terrible he couldn’t forget it. The only thing he told me was that he’d watched the Phillies whip the Astros, and that that was enough of the English life. Samuel and I are the same age, and my family lives on the next farm over but one, so we were friends since we were little, always playing baseball with our brothers and sisters, always together when there weren’t work to be done. So I could tell that Samuel was subdued but unchanged. The old wild Samuel was still there.

I hadn’t seen much of Samuel this summer. He was spending a lot of time at the Kunz’s, and of course we all knew why: he was sweet on Esther, their third daughter. But that summer who wasn’t? She was a pretty girl and her parents’ dairy made good cheese. So I was surprised on Friday when he came tearing down the road in his father’s buggy. “C’mon,” he said, “we’re a-going to Chicago. The Astros play the Cubs this afternoon!”

I could tell something was wrong. He smelled like sweat and his eyes were wild. There was a half-empty 12-pack of diet Pepsi on the seat beside him, and empties were strewn all over the floor or the buggy. And then I saw the worst: crumpled, empty yellow packets of Splenda. He’d been snorting maltodextran.

What could I do? I could have said no, but then what kind of friend would I be? I climbed onto the buggy seat beside him. “Samuel,” I said, “Chicago’s a long way away, and we’re not getting there this day.”

But Samuel wasn’t listening to me, he was listening to some devil deep inside. He stood up in the buggy, reins in hand. “Esther!” he wailed, a long loud shriek that carried his despair to the world. And then he brought the whip down hard on the back of the mare and the horse took off.

But the buggy didn’t. Samuel sailed through the air, reins gripped tight, as the horse and shaft separated from the buggy. Apparently Samuel hadn’t checked the connection, and the jerk of the whipped horse was enough to pull things apart. Samuel still gripped the reins when he landed and was dragged 20 feet as the horse and shaft headed up our drive to the road.

He lay there crumpled, bleeding from a gash across his head and from his nose and mouth. I caught up with him just as he was breathing his last: “Esther,” I thought he was saying, but then I realized that wasn’t it at all, it only sounded like Esther: “Astros” he whispered with his dying breath.

***

It is a good thing that the team ERA for June is 2.78. That’s 4th in the majors, and the next best is the 3.24 of our hated rivals, what’s-their-name from Oakland. 2.78 is a very good thing.

But here’s the problem: the bats are dead. For June he team OPS is .619, third worst in MLB. The team’s allowed 63 runs. The team’s made 66 runs. 63 runs allowed is great. 66 runs made is not great. Unless you’re allowin 40 runs. It’s all relative.

Keuchel allowed 3 runs, all on home runs. He pitched 6 innings, with relief from Fields, Wright, Clemens, and Blackley. The Astros one run came off of a Carter home run. See? It’s all relative.

***

Samuel wasn’t dead, but he broke his arm, his collarbone, and a couple of ribs. I visited him in the hospital and he told me that Esther had said he wasn’t the man for her, that he was too wild. That, he said, was what set things off.

As I was leaving he stopped me. “Do you think,” he asked, “it’s wrong to hate the Cubs? Esther said it was wrong to carry such hate.”

“Who doesn’t hate the Cubs,” I said.

Astros lose to some team from Milwaukee 3-1

contributed by Sphinx Drummond

A week or so I was thinking, the only good thing about playing in the AL is that the Astros won’t have to play the Enablers anymore. Not that the Milwaukee team is some evil rotten troll imposing its will on the downtrodden and disadvantaged. No, that would be its former owner and all around bastard, Bud Selig.

Wait, I temporarily forgot, that same miscreant that used to own the Enablers, the very stupid man, the most hated man, the least sympathetic, the most smelly and most ugly, is now King of baseball, and he started all that inter-league bullshit. We still got to play the chumps.

Eric Bedard deserved better than a no decision but Hector Ambriz didn’t see it that way. Bedard pitched a fine game, striking out seven, while walking two and allowing four hits before leaving in the eighth leading 1-0 with one out and one on. Instead of coaxing a double play, Ambriz, who obviously forgot to look at a calendar, coaxed a two run homer out of Richie Weeks. And permitted the “inducers of alcoholism” to lead the game by a score of 2-1.

The Astros were unable to mount any kind of meaningful offensive threat. They were full of meaningless threats having out hit the “Alcoholic Anonymous membership growers” 10 hits to 6. Jose Altuve may be finding his hitting groove again, going three for four and raising his average up to .295.

Aramis Ramirez did what he does against the Astros and hit another home run in the top of the ninth to give the Intoxicators a two run lead for Francisco Rodriguez who came in and picked up the save for the Inebriators.

The Astros look for a series win in a Thursday Businessman’s Special with Harrell (5-7) going against Gallardo (6-6). and then they travel to Chicago to face the Cubs on Friday.

Attendance – 15866
Game Time – 3:07
Temperature – 73

Astros 10, Boozy Seligs 1

Contributed by Reuben

Everyone should be particularly thankful that the Astros won tonight, because not only does it save you all from another rambling, whiny, angry recap of a Tuesday loss, it also probably saved you, and me, from another embarrassing, cringe-worthy headline like “Mirage of Figaro”.

This was a great game for the Astros. One that just leaves you with a nice, peppy feeling all around. They trounced their hated division rivals, er, interleague strangers, the Brewers. Carlos Pena hit a moonshot 3-run HR. Marwin laid down a sweet squeeze bunt. Paul Clemens pitched two whole innings without giving up a homer. But tonight was all about…