Baseball

The Houston Astros, after 157 games this season, are 73-84, in fifth place in the NL Central, and 17 games back of the first place St. Louis Cardinals

The Astros' chances at the postseason are deader than...well, it would be in poor taste to give names, but deader than a certain environmentalist actor who died in his early 20s from a drug overdose.

With the Los Angeles Times reporting that the Dodgers are in contract extension talks with Ned Colletti, now is as good a time as any to briefly address the elephant in the room before returning to your regularly scheduled playoff talk.

The Detroit Tigers are far from a perfect team.

Despite holding a division lead since May 10, the Tigers have failed to pull away from the mediocre pack.

The Tigers took a seven game division lead and Tigers fans started doing the math to determine what kind of a ridiculous streak the Twins would have to get on if the Tigers just managed to play .500 ball.

Unfortunately, Detroit went 8-11 between the sweep of the Rays and the beginning of this last home stand. The Twins went 13-6, even in the midst of losing perennial MVP candidate Justin Morneau for the season.

The Florida Marlins won't be playing baseball after the first Sunday of October, but they shouldn't chalk this up to a loss season.

No one expected these youngsters to end up with a winning record but that is what they have done. This can be an 88-wins season for the fish, if they run the table.

Looking ahead, the team should continue to build on what they have accomplished this year.

What They Have: Great One-Two Punch

"We made too many mistakes. A lot of bad things happened that we can't continue to allow. We've got to do a better job of handling the details of the running game."-- Jim Riggleman, Sept. 16, 2009.

THE RESULT: Poor baserunning, yet another botched squeeze and a meatball from a reliever for a grand slam resulted in the Washington Nationals 95th loss of the season. They haven't all come at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies, but it seems like half of them have.

"Everyone I know, everywhere I go/People need some reason to believe/I don't know about anyone but me." —Jackson Browne

If the Oakland Athletics' season were compressed into a single game, this would be point that is often affectionately referred to as garbage time. 

Kuip and Foss would be at least three-deep into the Dibs, with the latter undoubtedly regaling the audience with old war stories from his playing days in the '70s, anything to distract viewers from the tedium on the field. 

It’s no secret that Carlos Silva has been absolutely terrible since signing with the Mariners last year. He had a good first month, back in April of 2008, but since then he’s been worth somewhere around -1 wins.

I’d even go so far as to say that there’s a petty good chance the Carlos Silva signing will go down as one of the worst in Mariners history.

The Marlins played flat in their series against the Nationals over the weekend at Land Shark Stadium. Even in their one victory on Saturday night.

They went on the road to play the Cardinals, which was a tough task since the Cards play well at Busch Stadium.

They needed to win a series over there to keep their playoff hopes alive.

They did just that Wednesday afternoon at St. Louis by achieving a 5-2 victory.

On September 7, Brett Gardner was activated from the disabled list, after spending nearly a month and a half there. Since then, Gardner has appeared in a majority of games, but it is evident Girardi views Melky Cabrera as the Yankees' starting center fielder.

Now, there are very few ways to quantify the influence a manager has. One sure thing a manager can do to help his team is to have his best options on the field more frequently than lesser options. Is Melky Cabrera the Yankees' best option in center field, with Gardner on the bench?

Joba Chamberlain is just 25 years old and is about to turn 26 and he's in his third year in the Major Leauges. In his rookie year he appeared in 19 games and looked like the answer to become the eigth inning guy and possibly the closer of the future for the Yankees.

Yet, in 2008 George Steinbrenner had different ideas about Chamberlain. Instead of being the eighth inning guy, he wanted him as a starter.

Chamberlain did appear in 42 games and made 12 starts which meant he had 30 relief appearances.