Roy Oswalt Thinks the Astros Are Insufficiently Fiery

If you caught the Starting Five on Thursday morning, you saw that Joel Piniero continued his hot streak by shutting down the Astros on Wednesday night. The hard luck loser in the 3-2 game was Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt. Oswalt was peeved, either by losing a quality start or by the Astros' 14th loss in their last 18 road games, and decided to channel Joe Morgan to let his team know it.

"The team atmosphere is dead. There's no fire. When you get on a streak, you come to the field expecting to win. When you're dead, you come to the field just hoping to get by. That's what it feels like around the clubhouse -- just a dead feeling."

Oswalt's heart is in the right place, but fire isn't what's missing in Houston. Talent is the thing in short supply, which is illustrated by the fact that the team has outperformed their expected record by seven games through this point in the season.

The team may have believed otherwise after going 31-23 record over June and July. They were a game below .500 and within sniffing range of the Cardinals and Cubs in the Central division. But they'd been outscored by 12 runs over those two months, which was a much truer way of assessing their chances at singing a happy tune when all is said and done.

Fire can't make up for throwing Brian Moehler, Mike Hampton and the unsightly trio of Russ Ortiz, Felipe Paulino and Bud Norris on three of five days. It can't make up for Pudge Rodriguez and Kaz Matsui getting regular spots in the lineup and it can't make up for the fact that there are several clearly superior teams in the National League.

If anything, this season, and the performance of those five players in particular, should have taught the Astros that an over-reliance on grit, experience or whatever you call playing overly ripe veterans isn't a good strategy. After all, if fire was all it took to change things around, Oswalt could have shown more of it himself and won the game against Piniero on Wednesday night.