How bad have things gotten for the Astros? Their official ESPN blog is a link to a spam site, and apparently nobody has noticed

[Dan Druff]

ESPN has a feature called "The Sweet Spot Network", which is a collection of blogs regarding baseball.

Most teams have a volunteer blogger who maintains an active blog for his team.

There are a few teams without blogs, including the Dodgers.

You can find ESPN Sweet Spot here: http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot

Anyway, the Astros do have a blog. It's called "Austin's Astros 290 Blog". It can be found here: http://astros290.wordpress.com/

Notice that the URL is on the wordpress.com site.

Austin apparently didn't bother to register astros290.com, and a clever spammer grabbed it.

http://astros290.com/

The current content of astros290.com is spam about pond fountains.

That by itself is not surprising.

The hilarious thing is that ESPN accidentally linked astros290.com instead of Austin's Astros 290 Wordpress blog, and apparently there are so few Astros fans left that nobody has noticed or cared.

Of course, given what the Astros have done to their roster (they have a team payroll substantially LESS than even the pathetic Marlins), I think I'd also rather read about pond fountains.

[badguy23]

Be careful who you make fun of my big belly Jewish Friend. Do not make fun of the little teams It will harm you in the future. BTW the dodgers suck my dick and suck. What is there excuse? You looked real bad in your Dodger thread and Badguy has called everything and I mean everything right. Pirates a contender Dodgers over paid hype machine theres' always next yr. Go root for someone in the French Open!!! LA sports are done for the year once the Kings lose there game 7. Oh wait you did pick up some homo to play soccer so maybe go root for him.

[Dan Druff]

Be careful who you make fun of my big belly Jewish Friend. Do not make fun of the little teams It will harm you in the future. BTW the dodgers suck my dick and suck. What is there excuse? You looked real bad in your Dodger thread and Badguy has called everything and I mean everything right. Pirates a contender Dodgers over paid hype machine theres' always next yr. Go root for someone in the French Open!!! LA sports are done for the year once the Kings lose there game 7. Oh wait you did pick up some homo to play soccer so maybe go root for him.

How many years in a row now have the Pirates looked decent/good during the first half, only to fall apart in the second half?

The Pirates are not a good offensive team. They haven't been since Barry Bonds left 20 years ago. This is why the Dodgers repeatedly own them, even when the Dodgers suck. The Dodgers get killed by strong-hitting teams (Cardinals, Braves, and a few years ago, Phillies), but tend to destroy teams that can't hit. The Dodgers have fared a lot better in recent years with out-pitching teams like themselves than managing to outslug strong offensive clubs.

Anyway, back to the Pirates. Even with this hot start, they are below average in all offensive categories. That's a bad sign. Their pitching has been surprisingly good, but many of these performances are guys pitching beyond their ability, and they are likely to fall back to earth.

The Pirates may get far enough over .500 to score their first winning season since 1992, but they won't make the playoffs.

[WillieMcFML]

The Cardinals could put out their jv team and still crush both teams.