Bizarro Astros Lead Team to Victory

As I listened to the Astros pre-game show on my home from work last night, they were talking about the Twins' starter, Carlos Silva, who--prior to the game--had posted an ERA slightly north of a touchdown and extra point. Opposing hitters were hitting something like .352 against him which--in my tortured, made-up "equivalent hitter" statistic, pretty much means that everybody who bats against Carlos Silva hits equivalently with the second-best hitter in the National League (at the moment, Freddy Sanchez of the Bucs, who's currently at .353). Of course, my first inclination, then, was to think, "He'll no-hit us or some crap."

Well, what happened more closely resembled the "some crap" part of my statement than the "no-hit" part, but we still looked pretty much like Morgan Ensberg a bunch of elementary school girls against him. We managed all of five hits and three earned runs against him in six innings, which technically qualifies him for a Quality Start.

Fortunately for the local boys, a few of the Bizarro Astros decided to pay a visit. Bizarro, of course, is the anti-Superman who lives on Bizarro World (also called "Htrae"), where people get arrested for being normal, etc. Anyway, the most notable of the Bizarro Astros consist of the following players:

Bizarro Biggio: Gets clutch hits with RISP
Bizarro Burke: Suffers from self-doubt
Bizarro Berkman: Makes great baserunning decisions
Bizarro Ensberg: Doesn't over-think at-bats; is fearless at the plate
Bizarro Wilson: Has good, quality at-bats where he works the count
Bizarro Lane: Brims with self-confidence; shows little promise but still gets hits anyway
Bizarro Ausmus: Terrific career hitter who's having a fluke bad year at the plate
Bizarro Everett: Always a home run threat; splatters hits to all parts of the park

Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, Bizarro Lane and Bizarro Everett showed up and--because Gar[d]ner put them in the lineup because, not being Bizarro Gar[d]ner, he simply relied upon his usual conjecture, witchcraft, and "hunches" to make out his lineup.

Bizarro Everett collected a very un-Everettish 3 hits, including 2 doubles, and drove in 2 runs. Bizarro Lane had a clutch single to right field. Hooray!

Alas, Bizarro Ensberg did not make the trip. Regular Ensberg--"The Vortex"--showed up as a pinch-hitter, once again demonstrated that he's afraid of swinging the bat, and eventually popped up to the center fielder. I noticed, by the way, that Gar[d]ner finally observed what we'd noted a while back about the Vortex: he's afraid of hitting.

It's hard to tell if [Ensberg's] shoulder is bothering him or if the slump has gotten in his head. Garner gave him a green light on a 3-0 iptch the other night. Ensberg didn't swing at a batting-practice fastball.

"He's having a little hesitation in his mind about his swing," Garner said. "He's got to let the big dog hunt. He can't be too fine."

I think that pretty well sums it up.

In other Astros news, to make room for Fat Rog on the 25-man roster, Chris Sampson (1-0, 3.52 ERA in 4 appearances, 1 start) was sent to AAA. Here's a thought: why don't we just waive or DFA Trev-2ER Miller, rather than send down a kid who'd shown some promise? Oh, that's right: Bizarro Gar[d]ner doesn't manage this team.

A Great Day for Baseball

True, the Astros lost to lowly Kansas City yesterday. Well, Friday, too. But it could have been worse:

We could have had Mark Prior out there yesterday: 3.2 IP, 7 ER, 4 HR's. Interesting gamelog.

So there's a silver lining in the Astros' terrible weekend, after all. Heh heh heh.

Your World Cup Update

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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.