So. Drayton’s losing money and is threatening to sell the club if there’s a strike. Well he better get his e-bay posting ready, because here it comes folks.

Did anyone hear Richard Justice on 610AM today (7/17)? Apparently, the owners vs. players meetings have been so bad that at one point a players’ rep. (not Fehr) and an owner (Angelos I think he said) got into it pretty hard and started f-bombing each other. The players’ rep. stormed out of the room and had to be calmed down.

The owners say that they’ve put a comprehensive offer to the players, but have heard nothing. The players’ reps say that they’ve made concessions to the owners, but aren’t getting any feedback. The players are making Selig the issue; the owners are making steroids the issue. Bud wants to tour the locker rooms because he doesn’t trust Fehr’s boys to be disseminating the correct information (no one has yet suggested that he wants to tour because he misses getting to see the players naked).

It’s Armageddon time, people. Grab yer ankles and kiss MLB goodbye.Read More

I am sure that we will never no the true effort required of the Fearless Hosts to keep this site going. I know that I can lob them a Limey Time at my whim, and find it online within hours if not minutes. The dedication and attention this site has received from it’s founders is clear to us all, and I believe that we all understand K&S’s decision to pull the plug.

Personally, I doubt my Astro-fandom would’ve reached the ridiculous levels it has without this site. As many of you know, I arrived in Houston in March 1994 and became an instant Rockets’ fan as I was swept up in “Clutch City” fever. I’d followed what you call “football” from across the pond and so baseball was a distant third on my list of sports in which to become interested. To my ill-informed mind, it was nothing but a bastardisation of a girls game called “Rounders”, and just a poor man’s cricket.Read More

OK, so they haven’t exactly set the Central alight, but the Astros are creeping back into things. There’s one game left in Cincy as I type – a favorable pitching match-up for the Juicers – and Astros sit 6.5 games out of 2nd place with a chance to shrink that down to 5.5 tonight. With Roy on the mound and Berkman swinging for the fences, you have to fancy the Astros’ chances tonight. And did you know that Blud ‘n’ Mudders are 5-0 in their last five 1-run games?

However, after that it’s off to Pittsburgh, where things might get a little rougher. You see, the Astros have a sparkling rotation set for the wrap-around in PNC: Redding; Munro; Cruz and Miller. Yikes! Mlicki is due back at some point, but Hernandez may need surgery (MRI today or tomorrow) and Shane is definitely done for the year. The Astros are probably going to have a hole in their rotation for the rest of the season. Now that they’ve abandoned the B-Movie experiment of “The Sarloos Project” and beamed Kirk back down to the minors, the Astros will need Hernandez back and healthy, or Munro to be what no one’s ever expected him to be. That’s a tall order.Read More

Despite last night’s impressive win, the Astros continue to be the Co-Ardinals doormat. Actually, they’re the doormat of just about anyone not called Pittsburgh. Despite all of Jimy’s machinations, and God knows he’s been machinating, the offense can score runs in bunches only once or twice a week and goes horribly barren for the remainder.

This latest series was just more of the same. Despite outscoring the Co-Ards 14-13 over the three games, the Astros come out 1-2 losers. They have hammered out 233 runs so far, 4 less than the Red Birds while allowing a mere 217, 2 better than the Red Birds. Yet we’re staring up a Co-Shit Pipe to the tune of 7.5 games. Stick that in your Pythagorean theory and smoike it!

I don’t think I’m doing anything other than stating the bleedin’ obvious here when I say it’s the offense that’s at fault. What’s maddening, though, is that Jimy has no bullets to fire. Biggio may be clawing his way back to respectability and Ward may sport a flattering BA, but the truth of the situation is that only Lugo is doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. And that, dear reader, is a recipe for disaster; bigger than taking fruit steeped in Everclear to the Miller Outdoor Theater. Trust me on this one.Read More

The Astros and Co-ards are right there at the top of the NL batting table. The Astros lead the league in average and are second in slugging (to Arizona who’ve pounded an amazing 40 homers already) and only the freakish Montreal tops them in OBP. However, once you look past the two fancied Central division power-houses, you have to go a long way down the list to find the next NL Central club.

All the way to the bottom, actually.

Cincy (.238 Team BA), Chicago (.235), Milwaukee (.234) and Pittsburgh (.232) occupy the last 4 places on the hitting table. Chicago, presumably thanks to Skippin’ Sammy, shows some life in the slugging category, but otherwise it’s lights out for these clubs – in the bad sense of the phrase.

So how come the Astros and Co-ards aren’t running away with this thing?Read More

As I sit down to write, the Astros have just completed a piss-poor week. The 2-4 record on the road doesn’t really do justice to the frustration this trip has induced thus far. It started off well, with Biggio hitting for the cycle behind an effective Oswalt in the Astro-Graveyard one mile in the sky. Although things have gone better for this club in recent years in Coors, coming away with a split is nothing to be sniffed at.

However, the manner of the defeats in games #2 and #3 caused concern. Reynolds served up a 2-on meatball to scrub catcher Burnett, and blew a winnable game. Much mileage was made by the TV mediots of how one bad pitch can kill you in Coors. Really? I’m still trying to work out how one bad pitch managed to get runners at the corners in addition to the homer. Then, the much vaunted offense failed to capitalize on an unexpectedly solid performance from Super Dave Mlicki. Instead they scattered mostly singles, managing only one run which came on Doggie’s second solo ya-ya of the series.Read More