Whipped Cream Difficulties

Lawrence sent over a link to an interesting article at Grantland: “The Joy of Tanking: Hoarding prospects and being horrible with the Houston Astros”.

And finally, we come to the modern-day Houston Astros, who lost 106 games in 2011, 107 games in 2012, and six weeks into this season are on pace for their worst season yet. They are a threat to become only the second team ever, after the Amazin’ Mets, to lose 106 games three years in a row. The Astros don’t simply personify awful. They embrace it, they lovingly caress it, they whisper sweet nothings to it.

But the main point of the article is that the Astros actually have a chance to be good several years from now:

And once this season is over and the Astros can end their charade of being the worst team in baseball every year, they can use the free-agent market to actually upgrade their roster. The team has incredible payroll flexibility — they have $5.7 million in contract obligations on the books for 2014, and few of their young players will even be arbitration-eligible next season. There’s no reason the Astros can’t be competitive next year, at .500 by 2015, and then become legitimate contenders in the AL West in 2016 and beyond.

Currently, Houston and Miami are tied for the worst record in baseball: 12-32, with a .273 winning percentage. That puts both teams at a projected 117 losses.

I wasn’t planning to do these as a regular thing this season. But I figure with everything else going on, folks could use a distraction while we wait.

Surprisingly, the Astros do not have the worst record in baseball. The Marlins are at 3-13, for a .188 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 132 losses this season if trends continue: not quite Cleveland Spiders level, but good enough for third on the all-time list.

Houston is at 4-11, for a .267 winning percentage. That works out to an estimated 119 losses, which would be a record for the Astros, and would get them on the list right around where the 2003 Detroit Tigers are.

With the exception of my yearly $5 bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga, I don’t give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about college basketball.

However, the remarkable achievement of the Grambling men’s basketball team must be noted here: “…at 0-27, they became the only men’s basketball team in Division I to finish the regular season without a victory.”

How bad is Grambling?

Nineteen of the Tigers’ 27 losses came by 20 points or more. They have not lost a game by less than 10…
…They rate last among 345 Division I teams in offense, the only one with an average below 50 points a game (49.6), and 340th in defense, having allowed 77 points a game. They struggle to score when the clock is running, shooting a 342nd-best 36.3 percent, and when it is stopped, hitting a 343rd-best 58.5 percent of their free throws. Shots are hardly plentiful to begin with; they have been outrebounded by 7.2 a game, making the Tigers better than only three teams in the country.

To be fair, Grambling has been hit hard by NCAA penalties tied to their low academic progress rate. Grambling also has funding issues, which have lead the team to adopt the role of “cupcake opponent” for hire:

Grambling played just nine home games, all against other teams from the Southwestern Athletic Conference. In one arduous span, Grambling lost at Houston, Texas Tech, Oregon State, Auburn and Southern Mississippi by an average of 41 points.

And this is amusing:

Time has not run out on the Tigers’ season. They play Alabama A&M again Wednesday in the conference tournament, part of a seven-team field shrunk by the absence of other academic progress underperformers and a rules violator.

At least, it’s amusing to Lawrence and I and anyone else who remembers the “Charlie Tuna Oceanographic University” series of strips from “Tank McNamara”. (CTOU ended up playing in the Rose Bowl because every other team in the conference had been sanctioned by the NCAA.)