Astros Injure Necks in Process of Enthusiastically Tipping Caps to Duckworth

Following yesterday's disastrous 7-4 loss to the woeful Royals, the talk show lines were jammed with callers complaining about obvious goat Chad Qualls and, to an equal extent for having summoned Qualls, manager Phil Gar[d]ner--whose ability to predict the future was vastly inferior to that of the illiterate, toothless, foaming-at-the-mouth masses who invariably think it their due to second-guess every managerial decision following a loss.

There are plenty of goats for this weekend's disastrous showing. Rather than list each of the Astros individually on the sidebar goats section, we focused on the announcer, who once again committed an error in the late innings when he announced:

Now batting, centerfielder Mark... err, excuse me, David DeJesus.
We're now 0-2 when we're playing bad teams and the announcer commits an "E10" error. This one's all on him. Not that the Astros played well enough to win or anything, though...

No doubt feeling guilty about having cut loose Brandon Duckworth last year, after he had posted an 8.08 ERA in Houston over the course of two years (50 runs in 55.2 IP), the Astros tried to make it up to him yesterday by making him out as the next Cy Young--on and off the field.

Even the lowly Pirates had thought so little of Duckworth's skills that they did not even ask the Royals for a player in exchange, agreeing instead to accept only "cash considerations." Yet he managed to stymie the Astros yesterday, allowing only 2 earned runs over 5.2 strong innings yesterday. He also doubled and scored a run in their 4-run sixth inning. Duckworth's efforts were rewarded with the usual "tip of the cap" from Mike Lamb:

"Duckworth did a good job mixing up his pitches and kept us off balance," Lamb said.

Kudos to our hero of the game, Gar[d]ner, who dispelled Duckworth's entitlement to any "tip your cap" comments:

Garner preferred to give the Astros an assist for "making (Duckworth) look a little better than he threw."

Finally, somebody else said what we've been saying for years: don't tip your cap to somebody just because you hit like crap against him.

Passing thoughts not worth a full discussion:

• Clearly, journalists need to stop with the "Andy's making a resurgence" crap. Although he's not solely to blame for yesterday's loss, coughing up four runs--and the lead--in only seven innings is NOT indicative of having a "resurgence."
  
  
• Morgan Ensberg looks lost out there right now. Why is it that we started hitting after he got injured, then STOPPED hitting when he returned? Is he a black hole of crappy hitting, that his mere presence makes everybody forget how to hit? If so, get The Vortex out of there. Aw jeez, now we've got another nickname for somebody.
  
  The Vortex's average, by the way, is now down to .250. He was hitting .302 on May 9th. He then proceeded to hit 16-for-75 (.213) for the rest of May, and is hitting only .143 (4-for-28) in June so far.