While a thunder and lightning show was going on outside the park Friday night, the Astros took full advantage of a Javier Vazquez who wasn't quite as sharp in the early going as he usually is. Houston put three runs up in a lengthy second inning, and then used a big Orlando Merced two-run pinch homer in the seventh to pull away from Montreal 5-1 in the first game of what promises to be a challenging weekend series against the NL Eastern Division Wild Card contenders. Jeriome Robertson (11-5) got his pitching game back on track with 6.1 innings of five-hit baseball, and the Astros (62-53) thereby maintained no worse than a 1.5-game lead in the NL Central before play resumes Saturday. They also pushed out to a three-game lead over the struggling St. Louis Cardinals, who lost at home to Atlanta Friday night.

I sing no sad songs for Montreal, which got into Houston around 5:00 a.m. Friday morning after a game Thursday night in Arizona. Those are the breaks of the schedule, breaks the Astros and every other team know well. Even less sympathy might be extended to Vazquez, who travelled ahead of his team, as many starting pitchers (but not, apparently, Vazquez) often do, arriving in Houston several hours before his teammates. Despite the regular rest, Vazquez, leading off a series that's just about as tough and as important a series for Montreal's Wild Card hopes as the series is for Houston's division title chances, was about as off with his control as he's been all season, about as wild as I've ever seen him, in a 32-pitch second inning. Houston tattooed him for four hits in the inning, and Vazquez contributed four walks, consistently missing the outside corner on most of the hitters he faced. The prettiest sequence of that inning was the single by Jeff Kent followed by a scorching double to the gap in RCF by Lance Berkman, as Berkman put that deadly left-handed whipsaw swing of his on a mistake from Vazquez that was right there to hit. Richard Hidalgo kept the beat going by drawing a walk, and so did Gregg Zaun. These latter two at-bats were also different from the average, everyday walk. The Astros were focused in the second inning tonight, in a way that they were not focused on Thursday night. They made Vazquez work, and when they had him in a vulnerable spot, they did their best to knock him out. Adam Everett singled to shallow CF, scoring Berkman, and the Astros were poised to put this one away early. Unfortunately, they had Robertson up, and the best he could do was a tapper back to the mound, which Montreal quickly turned into a home to 1B double play. If it had been anybody else up there, I'd be moaning about a lost opportunity for a big inning, but all I ever ask of any pitcher is that he do his best to get the bat on the ball, and Robertson did that here, hitting it sharply back up the middle, but Vazquez fielded it. Craig Biggio still had a chance for a game-busting hit, though, and the walk he drew accomplished nearly as much, reloading the bases for Morgan Ensberg, whose subsequent infield hit toward 3B scored Zaun. Everett also tried to sneak in the back door at home and almost made it, but he was tagged out to end the inning. The hustle represented in the gamble by Everett showed itself through the entire game Friday, but it wasn't confined to the Astros' offense. Houston had already shown shown some heart on defense for Robertson, who was trying to rebound after two very rocky starts in a row.

The first inning for Robertson was an oh-boy-here-we-go-again kind of affair, as Jose Vidro, Orlando Cabrera, and Wil Cordero put together hits against pitches that were once more up in the zone. The last of these hits, however, was a single to shallow LF, and Berkman, as he has done at least twice in recent memory, played the ball beautifully and fired a strike to Zaun at home to nail Vidro for the final out of the inning. Robertson was also assisted by a great leaping, over-the-shoulder catch in shallow LF by Adam Everett for an out in the second, and an equally-fine diving stab and throw from 3B later in the game. Steadied in this way by the defense behind him, Robertson lasted into the seventh, being not as sharp as he has been in some games this year, but certainly sharper than in his last two starts. He gave up a run in the fifth on a walk to Brad Wilkerson, a fielder's choice and error on a throw to 1B by Everett and a clutch base hit to CF by Vazquez. He walked lefty hitters Joe Vitiello and Brian Schneider with one out in the seventh, which earned him an exit from the game, but he had by then clearly done all he could do as tonight's starter. I don't quite understand the luck that opposing pitchers are suddenly having in hitting the Astros' staff, and I'll never, for the life of me, understand--even after watching thousands of games--how a left-handed pitcher can walk a left-handed batter but, those minor carpings aside, this outing was a major step back for Robertson and, as I told my readers in Astroday Extra last night, he needed it. Brad Lidge's slider bit more tonight than it did on Thursday, and he got out of the jam Robertson created by striking out pinch-hitter Jose Macias with it and forcing a groundout by Ron Calloway. That was Montreal's last threat of the game.

Vazquez also settled down after the second inning and showed all of his great stuff--fastball, slider, the works. He kept Montreal close and the question throughout the middle innings was whether Robertson could hold the lead he'd been given. But after Macias had hit for Vazquez in the top of the seventh, Vazquez's relief, Luis Ayala, gave the Astros two more mistakes to hit. Richard Hidalgo led off with a single to LF and, two outs later, Ayala missed with an inside pitch on pinch-hitter Orlando Merced. Seeing the ball too far out over the plate, Merced golfed it into the RF seats, somewhat similarly to the way he drove his homer into the stands in Florida last Sunday, except that that one was, I believe, better struck. This homer was Merced's third of the season, his first as a pinch-hitter, and it provided Octavio Dotel with a comfortable four-run cushion for the eighth and ninth innings.

Dotel didn't need to extend himself too much Friday. He polished Montreal off with a five-pitch eighth and was scarely less efficient in the ninth. His two-inning stint gave a break to Billy Wagner and to Dan Miceli, both of whom we might see on Saturday night, when Jared Fernandez floats his knuckleball up to the plate against Livan Hernandez, who is usually tough for the Astros to hit.

Gregg Zaun put it best in a pre-game interview before Friday night: the Astros cannot afford to look past Montreal to the Cubs next week. To a man, the Astros did not look past the Expos in game one, although a more rested Expos team may provide a stronger challenge Saturday. Yet, the Astros cleared the first hurdle, and they beat a top-notch pitcher in the process. The offense was still confined to one decent inning and to hitting a mere handful of mistakes, but that's sometimes all a team can get, and sometimes it's all a good team needs. I'm still looking for a breakout stretch of games by the offense, and it would be good to begin that stretch this weekend. Berkman and Kent got some good swings tonight, the former extending his solid second half and the latter beginning to get on top of the ball again, even if the results of Friday's work weren't all that powerful for him. It will be most interesting to see whether Hernandez will give Houston's right-hand heavy lineup the same kind of mistakes Saturday that they got from Vazquez tonight.