Moises Alou's three-run homer in the bottom of the fifth Wednesday afternoon off Dan Miceli overcame the efforts of a sputtering Houston offense and handed the Cubs a big 6-4 win over the Astros that cut Houston's lead over Chicago to a game and a half but fortunately does not drop the Astros (64-56) into a tie for first in the NL Central with St.Louis, which lost at Pittsburgh. Houston still leads the Cardinals by one game.

Jeriome Robertson (11-6) had a spotty game on the mound today, finding worlds of trouble in both the second and the fifth, but the determining issue in the game for me was not Astro pitching; it was the lack of an offense.

Richard Hidalgo had given Houston a 1-0 lead in the second after muscling a Shawn Estes fastball off the end of the bat into the basket above the LCF wall. That drive showed some promise that the Astros would break out as a group today and have a good collective day at the plate, but it didn't turn out that way. Estes, who's had both good and bad games versus Houston this season, had only a so-so one this afternoon, and I am frankly surprised Houston didn't do more with him. His curve ball was occasionally excellent (as when he fanned Morgan Ensberg in the first inning) but, as most lefthanders do (including Houston's own Jeriome Robertson), he struggled in his efforts to live on the outside corner--a pitch that was being called; in fact, until the ninth inning it was the only corner that was being called. Given those struggles, I would have expected the Astros to be more patient at the plate and to drive the ball more than they did. Chicago's bullpen was first-rate, but in regard to the starting pitching the Astros faced, it wasn't as good as that of Carlos Zambrano Tuesday night.

The lead furnished by Hidalgo lasted about ten minutes, clock time. In the bottom of the second, Alou singled for the first of his two hits, and Eric Karros walked. Robertson then faced Aramis Ramirez. I said before this series ever started that one of the things the Astros had to do was keep Ramirez under control, and that they did for the first two games, but Ramirez bit the Astros again in this spot, slapping a ball past Ensberg for a RBI double. Damian Miller, who's only about as big a threat in the Cubs' lineup as Brad Ausmus is in Houston's, really killed a pitch to deep LF, and like that, Chicago had two runs more and a 3-1 lead.

To see Robertson give up the lead so soon was disheartening, but not deeply so. I kept waiting for Houston's offense to erupt, and when the Astros fired back with another run in the third on an Ensberg double and a Jeff Kent single, I told myself we were going to have ourselves a slugfest today, wind blowing in or not. Yet, that third inning carried with it some disappointment, too. Jeff Bagwell had walked before the Kent single, so the Astros were actually set up to do more than score just one run, but after Hidalgo flied to LF, Bagwell attempted to steal 3B. The call was close; in fact, it appeared that Bagwell had gotten a sliding foot on the bag before Ramirez got a thigh-high tag on him; but Alfonso Marquez called Bagwell out. Bagwell complained about the call, which is something he hardly ever does, but I took his complaint as the kind of thing that happens in a series in which the stakes are so high. I shan't complain overmuch about Marquez's call myself because, to allow myself the fan's right of indulgence in oversimplification, if the Astros' offense were functioning as it should be, Bagwell wouldn't have to be stealing 3B. But, facing the lefthander Estes, Houston was already down a watt or two in power in the batting order, with a right-handed Berkman, a right-handed Gregg Zaun, and a right-handed Adam Everett, who entered today's game hitting .238, and ended it the same way, so it's reasonable to believe that Bagwell was looking for a way to generate some offense.

The top of the fifth was one of the oddest, most frustrating innings of the year. It will sound strange to express dissatisfaction with an inning that produced two runs and an Astro lead, but I must express it. Houston got those runs because Chicago gave them away. Walks to Biggio and Ensberg set the inning up, but Bagwell struck out in a big spot. When Kent rapped a grounder to SS, I groaned, because I feared a quick double play. But the ball went deeper into the hole than I thought it would and Alex Gonzalez went the short way in an attempt to get Biggio at 3B. The play would have worked if Gonzalez had been playing for twenty-nine of the thirty clubs in MLB, but he plays for Chicago and his 3B is the iron-gloved Aramis Ramirez. Ramirez didn't catch an easy throw, and the ball bounded away toward the 3B dugout, but not far enough for Biggio to score. No matter. When Estes walked Hidalgo on four pitches, the Astros had themselves a tie, but the infuriating thing was that, in all this activity, they still didn't have a hit--a blooper, a liner, a deep drive, anything to bust the game open. They weren't going to get it, either. Working to the prime part of the Houston order, Estes and his relief, Mark Guthrie, held the Astros to only one further run, a sacrifice fly to RF by Berkman. I knew then just as surely as I know now those four runs were not going to be enough. I had no idea that Chicago's bullpen would go on to hold Houston scoreless for the last 4.2 innings of the game and limit the Astros to just three hits in that time, but I knew those runs would not be enough.

Chicago's re-taking of the lead in the bottom of the fifth was done in the classic baseball way of leaving a pitcher in one batter too long. Kenny Lofton, who has exacted payment for the Astros trade of him to Cleveland personally this season after a career of forcing the Astros to watch his success from afar, singled to RCF. Robertson had executed a 1-6 caught stealing in the first on Lofton, but that was no guarantee that Lofton, with his team down only a run, wouldn't cause trouble here. Jimy Williams came out, and for a couple of moments, based on his animated talk with Robertson, who was working over his bubblegum and nodding his head as he listened, I thought Willams was going to lift him; I thought also that he should have, on the grounds that Robertson was not throwing as well as Miller and Redding were throwing in similar tightspots in the previous two games. Robertson, who had given up five hits to this point, was in trouble. But Williams left him in, and Alex Gonzalez, who hasn't hit any team this season except the Astros (you could look it up), did it again, spanking a single to LF. Here came Williams again, who was probably thinking to himself he had left Robertson in against his better judgment, to pull him, but the spot he left Dan Miceli in was a tough one, a really tough one: two on, nobody out, and Sammy Sosa up. Miceli, who hadn't given up a run in any of his prior appearances, gave us signs he might be able to get out of the mess when he got Sosa to chase some well-moving stuff for a strikeout, but the forkball that he offered to Alou looked more like a fastball that just stayed forever in the hitting zone. Alou wiped it out, deep to LF. For just an instant, I thought the ball might hook foul, but replay showed the trajectory was straight and well fair all the way. I had a second conversation with myself after the homer, saying the game wasn't over, but Chicago's bullpen, spotty at times this season, pitched like the game was over. All I can say is that if Guthrie and Alfonseca and Remlinger and Farnsworth and Borowski keep pitching like they did Wednesday afternoon, they will overtake the Astros and Cardinals, even if they get no more hitting than they did against Houston today. Their starting pitching is tough enough as it is; add a re-focused bullpen to it (particularly Alfonseca, who looked nothing like the shaky pitcher of recent weeks) and Chicago could surprise people in the playoffs.

A potential weak link in that bullpen is closer Joe Borowski, who just doesn't look like to me he's as dominating a guy in that spot as a club needs. The Astros put together hits to RF against him in the ninth, singles by Ensberg and Bagwell, which raised the possibility of a miracle comeback and illustrated why I think Alfonseca might eventually have to slide back into the closer's role come late September or playoff time, but there was a big problem with those hits. They came with two outs. The inside corner, which hadn't been called all game long by home plate umpire Mike Fichter (much to the consternation of Estes and Robertson) suddenly became Fichter's favorite part of the plate on pinch-hitter Orlando Merced. Fichter rang him up there on a 1-2 pitch to start the ninth, and I just had to shake my head. The pitch was a strike, but if you've haven't called it all game long, it's hard to expect even big-league hitters to be ready to deal with it, even if they should be ready. Biggio flied to CF, after which Bagwell and Ensberg went to work, but Kent made me wish I had a bat rack to throw a bat in. I expected and hoped for a much better AB from him, but he got underneath a pitch I'm sure he wanted to drive, and popped it up weakly to Sosa in shallow RF. I'm not sure what pitch it was in the sequence, but it was early in the count--first or second pitch. I know it's Kent's habit to go after the first pitch, and I know why he does it (to get at the fastball), but I wish he'd cut it out, or at least cut down on doing it. Going after the first pitch with the frequency that Kent does is as deadly a pattern to fall into as any other bad habit would be. There's no harm, especially after a reliever like Borowski, who has sharp but not overwhelming stuff, has given up a couple of hits, in waiting out a guy, seeing if he'll give you a fastball in a sweeter spot, or maybe hang one of the breaking pitches that Ensberg and Bagwell had whacked for hits moments before. Kent can be tough at the plate; he does walk, but I wish he'd go deeper in counts more of the time, make more pitchers pitch to him. The pitch he got to end the game was a pitcher's pitch, up and just outside of Kent's effective reach.

Kent's inability to strike a big blow and the Astros' collective failure to generate an effective offense puts the club behind the eight-ball Thursday afternoon. Maybe Jared Fernandez will drive the Cubs crazy with his knuckler, but I'm not confident of that. Although I well remember his start at Florida, we're not talking about the Niekro brothers here for consistency and a measure of command over the world's most difficult pitch. I'd rather rest my hopes on Houston's lineup to score some runs for him, but against Matt Clement, I'm not confident of that, either. The Astros privately were aiming for a split of this series; they could still get it, and I hope they do. But on paper, their best shot at it was to beat Estes Wednesday, and Alou saw to it in the fifth that that wasn't going to happen.

Read the Astroday archives