Roy Oswalt

Someday soon a man wearing a suit should appear in the Houston Astros clubhouse. After confirming the players are indeed the 0-2 Astros, the man should then give them a stack of documents and say three ominous words:

"Consider yourselves served!"

The documents would then state that Roy Edward Oswalt and Wandy E. Rodriguez are suing Astros hitters for an unspecified amount of money for one simple reason:

Lack of run support.

The Houston Astros will take the field for their first game of the 2010 season on Monday, April 5 against the San Francisco Giants at 6:05 p.m.

The Astros dropped their final spring training game 13-6 to the Toronto Blue Jays at Minute Maid Park on Saturday, completing spring training with a 13-15 record.

Let's look at the opening day starting lineup and how they performed in spring training.

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What I’m Reading

• Get ready for some comic mischief and summer-hijinks – and all of it outdoors! What I’m trying to say here is that the Twins are planning on using a closer-by-committee strategy in Joe Nathan’s absence.

...It's spring training .

No, I'm not trying to pull an Eeyore and lament in perpetual negativity, but this is the time of year other teams evaluate players, trim their rosters and work to get their starters into baseball shape.

"Duh, Zowie!" you're probably saying. "Who doesn't know that?"

Well, probably not many. But I feel the need to issue this reminder for those over-excited Houston Astros fans who look at the team's 11-9 spring training record and are already preparing to buy tickets in October for Minute Maid Park.

As I read the news, watch bits of ESPN ,and look at videos on the Internet, I see some parallels between Houston Astros pitching this spring training and one particular scene from the 1988 movie Tucker: the Man and His Dream .

Ok, so I've spent a few blog postings whining about how Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane knows as much about baseball as ESPN columnist Rick Reilly (who famously has whined about how boring baseball is despite getting euphoric about that wonderful cure for insomnia, golf). I've also worried about Houston's off-season moves and how creamed cauliflower will have a better 2010 than the 'Stros will.

Today, we take an acrostic look at what Richard Zowie (that's me) thinks will happen to the Astros in 2010:

If you're a Houston Astros fan who would love to see hard-throwing lefthanded Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman wearing an Astros uniform, you'll most likely be very disappointed.

Right now, it looks like Jose Valverde has a far better chance of re-signing with the Astros (something he almost certainly won't do) than the 'Stros do of acquiring the defecting Cuban pitcher.

I think I'd have a much easier time trying to correctly interpret David Lynch's film Eraserhead than I would trying to understand what the Houston Astros front office is up to these days.

For those not up on cinematic issues, Lynch has never publicly commented on the interpretation of his 1977 horror/fantasy/sci-fi/drama, only to say that of all the guesses fans have made, nobody's ever come close to its true meaning.

I must admit: When it snowed last week in Houston, I thought something had happened.

You know, hell had frozen over because the Houston Astros of the Drayton McLane Era were finally on the road to making great baseball decisions and building a team that will be taking champagne showers in a few years.

Gone would be the heartaches of 1980, of Bob Knepper running out of gas in Game Six of the 1986 NLCS, and of Houston's flat performance in the 2005 World Series.

False alarm, apparently.

It should come as no surprise that the Houston Astros are in the hunt for pitchers this offseason.