The Pecan Park Eagle

“We will never catch the Astros from Cleveland at the rate we’re going!” (And thanks to cousin Jim Hunt for this use of his late aunt Myrtle Hunt’s artful work here.)

Coming down to the wire in the stretch, it’s pretty much an awesome away in the Baseball’s Biggest Loser Sweeps. Through all game of 9/09/2012, the Houston Astros hold a ten furlong lead over their stablemate from the NL Central, the Chicago Cubs, followed closely on the Cubbies tail by the Colorado Rockies of the NL West and two AL Central mates to complete the trailing pack of four, the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Indians.

No horse from the “Pack of Four” is going to catch the Astros in this not-so-hot-to-trot tiptoe race to the 2012 MLB stroller’s gate that is the biggest losers contest at baseball’s highest level. Through games of September 9th, these five clubs are the only ones in the big leagues who have yet to win sixty games on the year and one of those, our current far away leader and presumed biggest loser in the end, the Houston Astros, has yet to rattle the gate on fifty wins.

If baseball’s biggest loser can be determined by the established measurement of eliminated fat, the Astros won this race from the moment they started dumping players like Carlos Lee, Brett Meyers, and Wandy Rodriquez – all guys who took their fat contracts and better than AA/AAA talent with them to finish out the 2012 season in other venues. Their movement made sense in the light of the rebuilding plan, but, let’s face it, it also guaranteed that the club would play put the season with young inexperienced talent that in most cases (from what I’ve seen) was not yet ready to perform well at the major league level.

Now it’s way past the time for Astros fans to just bite the bullet and move on, but, in that regard, we all have to decide for ourselves how we do it. For me, the current level of play has just about killed my desire to go see any more games this year in person, whether the tickets are free or not. The novelty of seeing the new guys play just doesn’t spread too far when winning doesn’t happen that often – and watching “major leaguers” make fundamental mistakes on throws from the outfield, etc. is not my idea of grand fun – or how the game should be played at the major league level under any circumstance.

We are losing so much because we are playing out the 2012 season with AA/AAA level talent. Now, the way to become MLB’s real biggest loser is – to do the same thing next year. The novelty of watching the Astros play American League ball in brand new uniforms has about as much gate punch as one might expect through the first home stands with the Yankees and Red Sox. After that, everything goes straight to one question:

Are the Astros winning – or not?

Baseball fans are like any others. We need to know that winning is always possible – and not just one of those wild acorns that Darrell Royal once said any blind hog could find every once in a blue moon. Or something like that.