JJO gets macabre

I'm all for metaphors - obviously - but JJO took it to a new level:

For most of August, the stench of decay has been obvious to anybody around the Astros, and on Wednesday the St. Louis Cardinals’ Joel Piñeiro was the latest pitcher to dance on their grave.

Recognizing what many fans and baseball folks have seen of late, Roy Oswalt finally identified the body at Busch Stadium.

Roy does exactly that:
“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. It’s just a dead feeling. We got so far behind, it seems like we’re just kind of going through the motions as a team. We’ve got to play it out. We’ve got to play all the games...

...We have an owner that pays us money to come play. We’ve got to play. If you don’t give 100 percent, you’re cheating him and you’re cheating the fans of Houston. You’ve got to come out here and give everything you’ve got.”

JJO asked Roy if he means some guys are mailing it in:

"I’m just saying we’ve got to play. We’ve got to keep playing. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. Nobody else feels sorry for us. We’ve got to come in here and play and liven it up a little bit and play hard.”

Initially I thought, "who are these guys? I had more respect for them than this." And then I thought, "who can blame them?"

Coop was quick to put it on Roy:
"He wasn’t as sharp as he normally is. He had to battle. He really had to make pitches to get out of that first (inning). Heck, he had to do that in the fourth, the fifth and the sixth. He got the pitch count up, but he kept us in the game.”

No way.