The Houston Astros may have one of the most potentially explosive bullpens in baseball, if not the most. Dan Wheeler, who is currently their closer, got into a shoving match in the dugout with irrelevant starter Chris Sampson after Wheeler got tagged for four runs and a blown save in Wednesday’s game versus the Athletics.

Houston’s greatest mistake this millennium wasn’t letting Roger Clemens escape to the Yankees again or treating Jeff Bagwell like a pile of dirt. Their biggest mistake was letting closer Billy Wagner leave town and go to New York. Since Wagner’s departure the Astros bullpen, namely their closer situation, has been about as laughable as it gets. Brad Lidge had a great start to his career as Houston’s closer until Albert Pujols hit a ball off him that went into orbit and successfully mind-raped Lidge for a better portion of two and a half years now. That shot by Pujols still hasn’t landed, though I think German scientists recently spotted it flying somewhere over Berlin.

Enter Dan Wheeler. Wheeler’s 2005 and 2006 campaigns were great, and his outstanding ERA’s of 2.21 and 2.52 respectively had people calling for him to become the new closer. Well, they got their wish. Since assuming the closers role, Wheeler has recorded 11 saves for the Astros this year. The bad part? His ERA is a laughable 6.10 and he is currently 0-4. His abortion of a season so far in the closers role came to a culmination Wednesday when he nearly threw down with starter Chris Sampson after Sampson threw 7 innings of good baseball and was in line for a win. Nobody knows what Sampson said to Wheeler after Wheeler took his gas can of an arm out to the mound and successfully blew up the game, but it probably went something along the lines of this.

“Thanks a bunch Wheels. You know, the funny thing about baseball is, if you throw the ball right down the middle, no matter how hard it is, they’ll hit it. And they’ll hit it a long way. Thanks jack ass.”

This of course ignited the brawl that will somehow forever be linked with the Carlos Zambrano/Michael Barrett scuffle by the media through some odd connection that really doesn’t make any sense but just so happened to occur within a two week time frame of each other. This better not end up as one of those “catcher-gate” or “reliever-gate” things, as I’m pretty sure we’ve made our feelings on those titles clear. But I digress.

In the end of this all, Dan Wheeler will keep his job, Chris Sampson will return to irrelevance, and the Astros will continue to get lit up in the ninth inning. Instead of using a -gate, lets just call this one “The Curse of Billy Wagner, the one who got away.”