And The Beat Goes On: August 19th

I probably should have rolled with this track on a weekday morning when it would get more attention, but, well, I don't have another song right now, so here's Miguel Atwood-Fergson and his 40-piece orchestra covering J Dilla's "Fall in Love":

● All hell broke loose in Houston last night:

#Astros manager Brad Mills, hitting coach Mike Barnett, first base coach Bobby Meacham all fired tonight. Replacements named tomorrow.

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) August 19, 2012

● In today's vaguely bizarre development, the FWST blog had a post yesterday morning that read as follows:

Club officials have denied a report in today's Star-Telegram that Ryan Dempster didn't make the trip with the Texas Rangers to Canada because of family matters.

Sources told the Star-Telegram Dempster had to leave the team to fly to California for a custody-related issue with his children, but Rangers officials said he never went to California and that wasn't the reason he didn't make the trip to Canada. The team said Friday that he didn't make it for "personal reasons," and didn't divulge more details.

That post has since been pulled down. So, the Startlegram reported that it was a custody-related matter in its Saturday morning edition, the Rangers categorically denied it, the Startlegram reported that denial, and then the whole thing vanished from the Internet. I don't know, either. The only apparent certainty is that Dempster will start on Monday, with everyone getting pushed back a day and grabbing a little extra rest as a result.

● Randy Galloway has a column on the Melky Cabrera PED imbroglio and Victor Conte's comments this past week where he claimed that half of Major League Baseball was 'using,' and Galloway proclaims that there's "nothing to suggest" that any of the Rangers' current players are using any artificial substances to enhance their performance, because none of their pitchers or hitters have experienced huge spikes in their production this season.

I think any PED-related argument that relies so heavily upon statistical performance as an indicator of guilt or innocence is an extremely tenuous one to try and sell ... let's not forget that for every big name who has been confirmed as a user, there are about 10-15 journeyman/mid-level/spare types who have also been popped. Just because you're using an outlawed performance-enhancing substance (knowingly or unknowingly) doesn't mean that there's going to be discernible improvement in your numbers. Frankly, I'd be shocked if every Ranger currently on the 25-man roster was clean and/or had been clean for their entire careers. That would be a pretty naive assumption to make.

● Elvis Andrus says that he appreciated a day off from the hard Rogers Centre turf. Ron Washington says that Mike Napoli is looking more like his old self at the plate during BP sessions, and suggests that he must be feeling better.

● And this morning's .gif of the day, preceded by a Twitter backstory:

#Angels are six outs from losing a game they once led 8-0. And if they do, they will fall to 5-12 since the trade deadline. @mlbonfox

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) August 19, 2012

The homer that buried the Angels, and Mike Scioscia's reaction: