If the Astros were in the NL West, they’d be 1 GB.  Hooray mediocrity!

*hits self in face*

For the Stros, June was an ugly month.  It’s not like the team completely sucked ass and died, though, which makes a retrospective…interesting.  However, there are some patterns that are obvious, some patterns that many fans were worried about before the season began.

Offense:

Team: .264 Avg,  .317 OBP, .426 OBP

And there you have it, really.  We play baseball like a slow-pitch softball team.  Only 65 BB in 841 ABs is not acceptable.  We had 29 HR as a team in the month, yet we only drove in 92 runs.

However, there’s another disturbing trend at work.  We are a reliant team.

 Lance Berkman: 977 OPS.  Lee: 954 OPS. Wiggington, Erstad, and Loretta were the only other guys close to 800.

Miggy Tejada:  684 OPS.  After an awesome first month, he’s been a less than 700 OPS kind of guy.  Even Adam Everett has a 653 career OPS.  IOW, yes,Tejada has been Everett without the defense and about five extra bases a month.

Kaz Matsui: 2 BB in 67 ABs.  So much for his ability to get on base.

Hunter Pence: Eh, he’s young, so he gets a gimme.

Still, thanks to Berkman and Lee, the offense wasn’t so bad.  In fact, we were what we have been: lots of HRs with nobody on base.  HRs are great, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything, but we need to get people on base to make them count.

Pitching:

Ever seen Semi-Pro?  That scene where Jackie Moon talks about how he’s never thrown up?  Looking at our staff would induce that.

Again, we were made up of two players: Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez.  They combined for 5 of our 10 wins,  and provided an excellent third of our innings *as a team!*  Can’t say enough good things about their performance for the month.

Scuffy Moehler??? Two of our remaining 5 wins, and some solid pitching, if not nerve-wracking.

So, let’s take away those three guys, and what do we have???

 In the other 128 innings, our pitchers gave up a whiplash-inducing 5.85 ERA and 1.66 WHIP.  This includes Chris Sampson’s outstanding transition to the pen, where he was borderline unhittable.

Brandon Backe and Shawn “Ack!” Chacon led the shit-fest, but it was truly a team effort.

Fact is, we can’t expect Scuffy to put up numbers.  Basically, we have Roy and Wandy on our pitching staff, and we have Berkman and Lee with the occasional help on offense.  Why did we have such a poor June?  Over-reliance on the few.

The truly bad news?  We are an old team, and we have been injury free.  It’s more likely to get worse than better from here.

Thanks for joining me here in part two, which is really just part 1A of an obscenely long post I felt like breaking into two. What’s really the problem with the Astros? As I suggested earlier, it’s a combination of McLane’s overbearing personality which led to the hiring of problem number two, Special Ed.

It starts at the top with Drayton. You can’t completely begrudge the work he’s done – he introduced a modicum of stability and success into a franchise that had lost its way. He saved the franchise from being moved in the early 90s. That being said, the best owners keep a watchful eye on their franchise but leave the iron fist at home. Not so with Drayton and I think this is best illustrated by two problems. First, the Hunsicker departure. For once, Dickie Justice is right – running Hunsicker out of town was a terrible idea. He’s responsible for our one and only World Series appearance and (just look at the Devil Rays) clearly knows what he’s doing. You keep that sort of talent around even if you disagree with him at times.

Things are in a right awful state at Minute Maid Park. As much as I enjoy Shawn Chacon going Stone Cold Steve Austin on Ed Wade, that is a downright frightening indicator of the cancerous state of the clubhouse. I’ve got my own theories, mostly premised on two things: (1) Drayton McLane is a despot, and (2) Ed Wade makes me wish Steve Phillips was in charge. But all joking aside, it’s time to be extremely worried about your hometown heroes.

What started as one long post – I’ve decided to break into two parts. The idea is pretty simple: accountability is lacking in two places – the Astros and the coverage. Welcome to part one, where the average fan gets no answers from the media!

Now I usually steer clear of the Chomicale, but these guys have access to the clubhouse – and if I’m going to get a straight answer about what’s going on, I need to give Little Dickie Justice and the merry bad of ass-clowns over there a chance to inform me. How many times must I burn my hand on the stove?

Not the one that begins with, “I never thought it would happen to me…”, but it’s a start.

HOUSTON (AP)—Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon was suspended indefinitely by the team Wednesday for insubordination after reportedly grabbing general manager Ed Wade by the neck and throwing him to the ground.

Now, I’m not condoning violence, per se, as much as I am hoping that, when Chacon grabbed Wade, it dislodged whatever it is that has obviously been keeping oxygen from his brain.  Of course, it’s also fair game to wonder how Chacon grabbed Wade’s neck in the first place.  Was he actually just giving me a friendly colonoscopy that got out of hand?

Nevertheless, it’s fair to think that Chacon has seen his last game as an Astro.  And, here again, we go dipping into our horribly depleted minor league system to try and find an answer.

Dammit.

(PS: Dear AP: I linked to one of your articles, assholes.  See you in court.  And if you think the proven scam artists at the Media Bloggers Association represent me, you guys are incredibly moronic.)

The Astros team I feared in the offseason? The one with no pitching what so ever and a streaky, long-ball based offense? Yeah - I found them. And since they are playing Baltimore, they’re even in my TV viewing area! Which means I’ve been able to watch it live and on TV! If you need me, I’ll be over here crying myself to sleep because I see no fixes in the near future and nothing coming up from the farm.

That’s a long way of saying the following - it’s time to fire Ed Wade and Cecil Cooper. To be fair, Ed Wade should never have been hired in the first place. There are not actually words in the English language to express my utter dislike of Ed Wade. “But he drafted Utley, Rollins and Howard for the Phillies!” And tried shipping two of them out of town for crappy veterans. I really don’t understand - the model for sustainability is to develop a strong farm system and compliment it with key veteran/free-agent signings. Look no further than the Red Sox. The core of that team is home-grown talent (Ellsbury, Masterson, Paplebon, Youk) with some fantastic free agents. So what do we do? Ship whatever is left and bring in aging veterans like Tejada and Matsui. This, friends, is not a recipe for success. And don’t tell me we can’t afford that model - look at our payroll.

And as for Cooper? I no longer can justify his moves. He rests veterans for inexplicable reasons, makes curious pitching decisions, and just generally seems out of his league. Gah!

I understand this is a long rambling rant from a disgruntled fan. But watching the Good Guys play ball the last few days has been nothing short of distressing. And the Cubs are in first. God I hate baseball.

A day late and a buck short (no seriously, BFD doesn’t pay me – does someone have bus money?)  Nevertheless, here is this week’s power ranking!  No change at the top, but since I have the attention span of a – hey look over there!  Er yeah… wholesale changes everywhere else.

1.  Gaza Hezballers: The Hezballers hold on to the top spot, mostly because I’m still dominating my fantasy league by a ridiculous 19 points.  Seriously – the last three years I’ve finished dead last.  This is about the best thing going for me right now.

2.  The New York Mets:  I like a team that provides me comic relief.  And nothing says big dysfunctional family like firing your manager, pitching coach and hitting first base coach after back-to-back wins – and releasing the statement at 3:15AM EST!  Honestly, Omar Minaya gets too much of a free pass – he’s made some truly awful signings, and expecting to contend with a team that would rather read Readers Digest and watch Matlock than play baseball isn’t usually a winning formula.

3.  Hank Steinbrenner:  Special thanks to the ever-vigilant Crawfish Boxes for pointing this one out to me.  And I quote: “My only message is simple,” Steinbrenner said in Tampa, Fla. “The National League needs to join the 21st century. They need to grow up and join the 21st century.”  There are limitless possibilities there – seriously, free-for-all in the comments.

4.  Tiger Woods:  Look, I’m not really a golf guy.  I enjoy it in HD because it’s pretty to watch – but my interest extends only as far as Tiger’s in contention.  That said, you have no soul if you weren’t consumed by the Saturday-Sunday-Monday spectacle that took place.  His Saturday round was completely ridiculous, and he birdied 18 TWO days in a row to prolong the tournament.  All on a bum knee.  That, friends, is complete and total domination of a sport.

5.  The NL West:  One team over .500?  Check!  Reigning NL Champions in last?  Check!  General indifference of national media?  Check!  Ladies and gentlemen your NL West!  After a sizzling start the D-backs have stuttered back down to earth.  Joe Torre doesn’t seem to be able to get Dodger fans in the stands before the 3rd inning (though to be fair, who can?)  And only one team has scored over 300 runs so far this season.  Thankfully this sort of anemic baseball only airs after 10pm.

Sidenote: Guess who’s calling the College World Series?  Robin Ventura!  Does anyone – ANYONE – look at that guy and not think “got his ass kicked by 40-year old Nolan Ryan”?

Real life has been real busy lately, and this will be a quick edition of rights and wrongs.

Rights:

Carlos Lee, Darin Erstad, and Miggy Tejada all put up OPS better than 900.

Brad Ausmus and Michael Bourn both had OPS over 790.

And that’s about it.

Wrongs:

Team batting line for the week: .263 avg, .306 OBP, .351 SLG, for an OPS of 657.  Hunter Pence was 2-23 for the week.

Worst of all, and I harp about it constantly, is our inability to draw walks.  In 206 PAs, we drew the grand total of 12 walks.  To put it in perspective, the “normal” season for a starter is a little over 600 PAs.  As a team over the course of a season, we would’ve had 36 BB and 114 Ks.  That’s downright NEIFI!-esque, and it’s why we are struggling.  As nice as it is to hit home runs, you’ve got to put people on base.  Out-making is not a viable offensive strategy, but it’s what we are doing.

Speaking of out-making, Friday’s game deserves the ole’ pink highlighter treatment thanks to all the caught stealings (CS).  For the week, were had 8 SB and 5 CS, which, in reality, is just below the steal break even ratio of about 67% (in other words, you must be successful on 67% on your steal attempts for the steals to be worth it).  But that doesn’t include a huge out by Hunter on the bases in Saturday’s game.

And the pitching?  For the week, we had an ERA of 7.01 with a WHIP of 1.65.  *We* walked 29 BB in just 54 innings, which gave our opponents a net gain of 17 baserunners.  That’s three baserunners per game via walk alone.

Roy, who had his best start of the season earlier in the week, got lit up on Sunday.  Shawn Chacon had the only other quality start for the team with his outing.  For almost everybody else, it was fuggly.

After failing to take advantage of a week of home-cooking, we again hit the road where we’ve struggled with a 16-21 record.  We kick off the festivities at Baltimore, and we wind up the week with one of the surprise teams of the year, the Tampa Bay Satan Worshippers.  They’ve been my second favorite team to watch this year, so I’m excited about the match-up.

I had grandiose plans of getting some content up today. However, I’m nursing an absolutely epic hang over right now - so I’m going for a bit of a cop out and just dumping some interesting baseball links here. Forgive me!

• Jose de Jesus Ortiz (who is one of two writers I will actually read at the Chron) seems to think the Astros should sign recently released Sidney Ponson. I am 100% behind this idea because it would make the ‘Stros the fattest baseball team ever. Also, every team should have an Aruban Knight.
• Jack Wilkinson has a good piece on Griffey’s 600th homer over at SI.com. I get kind of depressed anytime I read/see/think about Griffey - mostly because of the “what if.” What if this guy had stayed healthy? Bonds-Griffey would have been the ultimate good versus evil - and could have been the greatest storyline/spectacle in sports. Alas…
• Lesbians and baseball. (I know this story has already gotten a lot of traction, but I reiterate my initial point - lesbians and baseball.)
• Pujols strained his calf yesterday, probably while standing at home plate admiring his own homer - likehedoeseverysingletime. Wait what? Oh - Joe Strauss at the Post-Dispatch tells me it was while digging out a grounder. He also says a DL trip is imminent and the Flying Red Rats have already called up Chris Duncan. When reached for comment, Backe told me “He’s just scared I’m gonna whoop his ass.” You sure are, Brandon… you sure are.
• Zlatan Ibrahimovic unleashed an absolute cracker of a goal in Euro 2008 action yesterday. (Third video down) Ok so it’s not baseball related - but I just wanted to share because (a) I’m a huge soccer fan, (b) the guy’s name is ZLATAN!, and (c) it’s my post.

Alright that should be enough to keep you kids busy for a little bit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have my lunch of advil, water and prayer.

Super quick-hitter today.

Recap: I remember you now, Roy.  Puma a One-Man Wrecking Crew on offensive.  6-1 good guys.

Preview: Manny Parra versus Brandon Backe.  Parra is the dude who threw a perfecto against Round Rock last year.  Backe now thinks he’s a strikeout artist.  Milwaukee torched Backe for 3 HR in just 5 IP the last time they faced Backe.  I don’t know what it is about this match-up, but it looks fun.