The Kansas City Royals called for a right-handed relief pitcher during their September 6th game against the Texas Rangers. Drama is what ensued.

Welcome to this, the fifth installment of the Ironic Jersey Omnibus. Our tour of personal expression through the medium of polyester and hand-stitching, last seen in the majestic purple of the Colorado Rockies, wanders southeast toward the sunny climate of Houston, Texas.

The Astros, both as a social construct and as a jersey, contain some idiosyncrasies that must be touched upon before we move on to the body of our work. Few teams have hurled themselves so eagerly into the aesthetic void as the former Colt .45s, adorning themselves with stars, rainbows, comets, guns, and numbers on pants. The exuberance the reader must feel at such a dizzying choice of fashion is understandable. It’s with a heavy heart, only somewhat feigned, that I ask you to throw the entire wardrobe out.

Today, there is no room for Eddie Mathews. We must turn away from Nellie Fox, Joe Niekro and even JR Richard. It is not time for Joe Morgan. Not even the muted, tolerable averageness of Terry Puhl can dampen the orange hue of better times. No, today we speak of a franchise that is severly wounded. We can’t ignore it, or wink at it. To wear an Astros jersey is to don the funeral garb.

During these dark times, there are really only three ways to wear an Astros jersey. The first is through sincerity, in total mourning for their ballclub. Such touching and honest displays of loyalty need not be discussed here.

The alternatives are to struggle vainly against the dying of the light, to mock the heavens and the ownership that has forsaken them, or to offer one’s self up in the holy resignation of Kierkegaard, caring for the soul and waiting for divine judgment. Think of this edition of the Omnibus, then, as your spiritual guide as we delve into the darkness of Astrodom and, hopefully, emerge from the other side as wiser, more sophisticated, and better-dressed fans.

STAGE 1: ANGER

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The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

What if Ricky Romero didn’t have the American League’s highest walk rate, and its highest ERA. What if Romero pitched like he did in 2010. What if the Blue Jays drafted Troy Tulowitzki, and not Romero. (Editor’s note: We use that one every year.) What if Jose Bautista didn’t get off to such a slow start. What if Joey Bats didn’t hurt his wrist.

What if Kelly Johnson didn’t strike out so often. What if the Blue Jays kept Aaron Hill. What if Adam Lind was more than a one-year wonder. What if Yunel Escobar’s .298 OBP wasn’t 56 points below his career average. What if Escobar could be consistent; how good could he be?

What if Dustin McGowan — ha! — and Jesse Litsch were healthy. What if Kyle Drabek didn’t need a second Tommy John surgery. What if Drew Hutchison didn’t need his first. What if Brett Cecil found the two missing miles per hour on his fastball. What if Luis Perez didn’t tear his ulnar collateral ligament. What if Brandon Morrow started more than just 16 games.

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You may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?” – Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

This piggybacks off Mr. Baumann’s post, I suppose, since I never met I good idea I didn’t want to steal.

Most every baseball fan thinks they can run a team better than a given group of current general managers. Article commenters and radio show callers pull no punches when exalting their genius ideas for turning a team around through free agent acquisitions and trades. Save for the ridicule of other commenters and hosts of said radio shows, there are no ramifications for these plans. No trade is too outrageous, no signing too extravagant.

We, the statistically inclined (I refuse to use the term sabermetric community), are no different. We take a dissimilar approach, no doubt, but the result is the same. We create plans and strategies for turning hypothetical teams into hypothetical winners. We write articles about how a GM made a poor decision based on a set of historical data, or praise another for his forward-thinking approach to crafting a team.

Though the ideas of traditional and statistically-minded fans may differ, they do have something in common; they have absolutely zero experience running a professional baseball team. I am not breaking any new ground here. I doubt anyone needs to be reminded that they’ve never had a particular job in the past. But if I’m writing about a trade, or reading an article breaking down free agent signings, I sometimes have to remind myself of just how difficult it would be to be a below-average MLB GM, let alone a renowned and respected one. Do I still think I could do it, though? Of course. Don’t we all?

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The most thing ever is probably a rainbow shooting off a tough guy’s face, maybe in the rain. After the near-fight Wednesday night, the most mostest thing ever is obviously a double rainbow shooting off of Pablo Sandoval’s face in the wet salmon-pink San Francisco sunset sky.

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There’s a thing that Mark Reynolds intended to do with his bat, and then he did that thing.

Now, Mark Reynolds has no more use for his bat.

Tops among the things about which I spend a lot of time thinking: baseball, and ways that I suck as a human being.

I probably “know” more about baseball than almost every person that I encounter on a daily basis. (Not a lot of hardcore sports fans coming through the doors of Woodland Pattern Book Center, and my housemates are mostly hipsters.) For seconds at a time, even, that thought embues me with a sense of uniqueness — and uniqueness is justification for existence, isn’t it?

However, each day I also partake of the Realm of the Intertrodes (aka Interbert J. Internets), where I have another kind of life that’s filled with dozens of people who know all sorts of things about baseball, where there are entities like FanGraphs, or Joe Blog.

During my e-time, then, I remember that I don’t know shit about baseball. (And yet, I write for this awesome site.) I’ve been having this feeling for a long time. Consider this blogpost I made over three years ago, when writing for a site like this wasn’t even a glimmer in my eye. In the post, I admire one of Carson’s FanGraph posts about Mark Bellhorn. Over two years later, Carson saw enough in me to allow me to post here. Though I’ve thoroughly relished the opportunity, some days I am filled with dread at the idea of having to post something here, where many of the readers (it’s apparent through comments) are just as fit or much fitter for this task.

Today is one such day. And in my dread, for some reason, I googled “who knows the most about baseball”, and what I found was underwhelming, as you can see in the image above.

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I wrote about the Baltimore Orioles on Monday. As it turns out, people have strong feelings about the Orioles. Most of the comments I got fell into one of these categories:

– The writer is an ass-clown, the Orioles are winning with hustle and poise and grit and spunk, and you “pencil neck baseball anylists” can take your WAR and shove it somewhere dark and humid.

– The writer is dead-on, the Orioles are winning with a dwindling stash of magic pixie dust, and you O’s fans better enjoy it now before your team CRASHES AND BURNS SUCKERS!!!1

– The writer is engaging in something called ‘satire,’ and evidently it worked.

For the record, I really like the Orioles. Clearly they are experiencing some luck, and they are also doing a lot of things well. I think they are an interesting outlier and I hope they continue to, um, outlie. It’s fun and interesting when our best knowledge turns out to be not perfect. Right?

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On June 13, when Josh Donaldson was sent down, his line was an astonishing .153/.160/.235. In exactly 100 plate appearances, he had 1 walk, and that was in that final June 13 game. He had 1 home run, 7 RBI, and a total of 6 extra-base hits.

He has played 19 games since getting called back up in the middle of August. His line now stands at .231/.268/.408, which, of course, is nothing to get incredibly excited about.

But that means that since getting called up, in 79 plate appearances (through Monday’s games), he’s at .338/.405/.648. What has happened to Josh Donaldson, and, more important, why haven’t I activated him out of the farm system of my Scoresheet team??