The Monday F5ive

The five things on my mind:

1-Phillies vs. Cardinals ESPN

Kendrick vs. Hawksworth

Interest Level: 8

A battle between two pitchers on my Razzball team....obviously, I would prefer the Phillies to win this one but the more runs these two starting pitchers give up, the better

2- Madison Bumgarner's start against the Dodgers

Bumgarner has taken the minors to school and gives the Giants another talented arm in the Giants rotation. He's pitched well in 4 starts in the bigs this year (2-2 2.57 era). Bumgarner faces a giant test tomorrow to see how reliable he will be down the stretch as he gets his first taste of the bitter Giants-Dodgers rivalry.

3-Roy Oswalt's Injury

Oswalt ended up leaving Sunday's start with an injury. This makes things a bit complicated. They haven't mentioned how much time Oswalt will be out but it seems to go without saying that this will complicate the inevitable trade to a contender and diminsh the returns the Astros would get for Oswalt.

Another in-direct subplot is how (and if) this injury affects his place in Astros history. If this injury causes Oswalt to miss a start, it may take away his chance of breaking Joe Niekro's all-time Astros record for wins (though the anemic Astros offense could just as easily take the blame if this were to happen....6-10 despite a 134 ERA+).

Or this could indirectly give him more than a few more starts in an Astors uniform. This injury could scare potential suitors away and/or reduce what they are willing to give in return....combined with him missing a limited amount of time...it could divert contenders looking for starting pitching in another direction, Oswalt gets time to get the franchise win record and the Astros hold off until the off-season and get a better return for Oswalt.

4- Sports/Movie Cross-Over Part 1: Major League

A sad day in the sports/entertainment industry as James Gammon, who played manager Lou Brown in the Major League franchise died at the age of 70.

The movie, about an Indians team assembled with a bunch of cast-offs designed to make the Indians so bad to plunge attendance numbers so their owner could move them to Florida.

In real life, the 2010 Indians being managed by Manny Acta have zero-to little hope of winning this year (like their movie counterparts had in spring). While the scrappy underdogs pull it off in the movie, edging the Yankees for the AL East title (this scenario has to change in the inevitable remake due to re-alignment), real life does not act like the movies and as good as Carlos Santana is it is unlikely they would bypass 4 teams and cash in on a .2% chance of making the playoffs (even if Kerry Wood gets off the DL, returns to his dominant form circa 1998 and becomes a modern day Ricky Vaughn). But hey, if the Indians do pull it off, they could re-make Major League (even if they don't it will probably be re-made as 80s movies are being re-made left and right as we've apparently run out of ideas).

5-Sports/Movie Cross-Over Part II: Tropic Thunder

Disclaimer: This one is not baseball related but is something I couldn't resist mentioning since seeing Tropic Thunder

Yesterday, I ended up renting and watching the film Tropic Thunder. The film is about three mega-stars (Ben Stiller as Action Star, Jack Black in the Eddie Murphy esque-role of playing several unfunny roles in the same film and Robert Downey Jr. as the critic-favorite) who unite to make a mega-budget film with a rookie director only for the director to be unable to manage their egos and having a project where nothing can go wrong have everything go wrong.

During the summer, three mega-stars (LeBron James, Dwayne Wade & Chris Bosh....alongside their hand-picked supporting cast...) who have previously played for separate teams (Cleveland, Miami & Toronto) who unite in Miami for the mega-uber project of the ages........together with a fairly young Eric Spoelstra (while he has a couple years experience....seriously he doesn't look like hes over 25).

One thing thats popped into my mind as this LeBronadrama has been going on is that anything less than 5 titles is going to be a disaster. However, with the unprecedented amount of stars (and egos) involved......somebody is not going to be happy...........all 3 of these are going to want to be the man and how their egos are not going to take over, I don't know........this is a very delicate balance that could very easily implode.....and this is BEFORE we take into account Bosh's lack of playoff experience and LeBron's tendency to save his best for the meaningless regular season games, the real life Miami Heat could easily become just as dysfunctional as the fictional actors in Tropic Thunder and this could make LeBron and Bosh both title-less even after their contracts expire.

5/22: Ranting on the Brewers and Roy Oswalt Wanting to get out of Houston

Well, after Thursday's win over the Pirates, there was (faint) hope that the Brewers could turn things around and go on a winning streak (that's when a team wins more than one game in a row.....or so i'm told).

Then, last night happened. Dave Bush lasting a 1/3 of an inning (but long enough for an umpire to try to fight him). Carlos Gomez over-celebrated a home run (while the Crew was down 12). In all seriousness, maybe this is the type of swagger the Brewers need to come back to (i.e. Choreographed Home Run Celebrations, Untucking, etc.)......the Brewers toned down on that stuff this year and also toned down their place in the standings at the same time.

Also, gotta say, i'm slowly but surely coming around on Carlos Gomez. I didn't think much of him when he got traded for J.J Hardy......i thought of him as another speedy light-hitter who was going to be a liability on offense. However, he's shown improved power (still not being mistaken for Braun/Fielder) he's hit for decent contact (but could improve on selecting which pitches to swing at) and the guy is an absolute vacumn in center field.

As for today, things ain't lookin much better. At least today's starter made it out of the first and has "held" the Twins to 4 runs in 2 2/3.

In the fake baseball world, John Lackey's bad start finally moved me to the point where I had seen enough and I sent him away to this magical place called the waiver wire (all this place had to do is give me Clayton Richard). Despite this bad start, my team is still hanging on to a 206-180 lead.

Well the Brewers might be a dysfunctional NL Central team but......but their team of strong hitters, bad pitching, and bad managing is joined in this dysfunction (and in the bottom of the standings) with the soon-to-be conducting a fire sale Houston Astros.

The writing for this is basically on the wall. Roy Oswalt has formally requested a trade. This is beyond bad for the Astros for a few reasons.

Oswalt is the face of this franchise:

Maybe the last few years haven't been the peak of his career. Maybe he hasn't finished in the top-10 in Cy Young voting since 2006. Maybe he's had lingering injury troubles as he gets to the wrong side of 30. But when you think of the Houston Astros, Roy Oswalt is one of the if not THE first name that you associate with that team. He has been deeply entrenched in that teams rotation since 2001. While star players switching teams isn't exactly a new phenomenon, he is on the short list of players where it would be totally weird to see him pitching in a different uniform.

He's one of the few bright spots on a pretty dull team:

The reality is this, if he were to be theoretically traded today, this team goes from one of the worst in baseball to a chance to be one of the worst teams in history. As it stands, the Astros are 15-27 (which is sadly better than their pythagoreon record of 13-29......Brad Mills may or may not be a good manager but we'll never know since this team is going to tarnish his W-L to the point where this is likely his only chance to manage...but that's another rant for another day).

Point being: 2010 Astros are pretty bad and they would be a lot worse if not for Roy Oswalt. Yes, I am completely aware that Roy Oswalt is 2-6 this season. However, the rest of his numbers indicate that this is a vintage peak (or better) season for Oswalt.

His ERA+ is 160 (Tied for 8th in the NL and the second best total for his career), His WHIP is at 1.066 (good for 9th in the NL and just shy of his personal best 1.059), he's only given up 7.2 Hits/9 (shy of the top-10 but would be a career high), Tied for 7th in innings, tied for 5th in strikeouts tied for 7th in SO/BB ratio at 3.75 (his best since 2006).

Point being, this isn't your typical 2-6 pitcher..if you remove this from an already bad team this becomes an even more colossal train-wreck....when (not if) he gets traded Brett Myers become their #1--Myers isn't a bad pitcher but he hasn't exactly been mistaken for an ace..with a back of the rotation of Wandy Rodriguez (acutally not that bad) Felipe Paulion/Bud Norris/#5 Pitcher TBD combined with a starting line-up led by a struggling Lance Berkman (95 OPS+), their second best hitter being Michael Bourn (seriously, you couldn't even make this up) and 4 starters with OPS+ below 52 ("led" by Tommy Manzella at 35+, this team has 110, maybe 115 losses written all over them, depending on when they trade Oswalt.

To put into context the pitcher that is requesting to have no piece of this team (according to his B-R page, the 3 most similar pitchers to him are Roy Halladay, Johan Santana & CC Sabathia). It's too early to tell where he's going to get traded but wherever he does he's probably going to be the difference between that team going to the post-season and not going to the post-season. I'd be surprised if he DIDN'T have a CC Sabathia type-effect on his future team.