Gerry Hunsicker evidently brought up a question on his pre-game radio show Sunday that's been on many people's minds for quite a while: when was the last time the Astros strung together a lot of hits and scored a lot of runs in an inning? The singular three-run homers by Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman on Friday night and Saturday afternoon in the current series have to be left out of account. When those exceptional home runs are excluded, the answer is, a very long time ago.

The sporadic second-half offense showed up again today at Great American Ballpark. A first-inning homer by Jeff Bagwell, a fourth-inning single by Jeff Kent, and a sixth-inning fielder's choice groundball, also by Kent, were all the run-scoring energy the Astros could muster, and those efforts simply were not enough to overcome home runs by Dernell Stenson and Juan Castro against Tim Redding (8-11) in a discouraging 4-3 loss to the Reds. With the defeat, the Astros (65-59) could possibly once again drop out of first place or into a tie and jet back to Houston hoping that the two-week homestand that opens Tuesday night will, in the end, bring them some answers to the problems that plague their mysteriously-poor hitting attack.

The weaknesses of that hitting attack--an inability to attack consistently the fastball in the hitting zone, coupled with low-grade work against breaking balls that aren't strikes but are hittable--have been discussed many times in this column over the past four seasons, so I won't go into them again here, but many of those problems cropped up again today, as the Astros made real the mild premonition I had at the end of Saturday's Astroday that getting shut out over the last four innings did not bode well for today's contest.

Neither did the lineup change of Colin Porter in CF for Craig Biggio, although I anticipated it yesterday. The logic of substituting a bench player for a veteran is that by doing so, one saves the veteran for meaningful games later in the season. We are now two days past the mid point of August in a pennant race in which three teams are separated by no more than a game. If a Sunday game against a divisional opponent with fewer than forty games to go is not a meaningful enough game, then what game would be? If Biggio continues to get Sundays off into September, for what "future" could Jimy Williams possibly be saving him? It was for this day, this hour, this time of the season that Biggio was supposedly being rested back in April, May, June, and July. I am as troubled as anyone by his declining BA and his soaring strikeout totals, but Biggio should be in there, not Porter. The time for the veterans to rest is over.

Bagwell's 28th homer of the season gave the Astros a quick lead, but Stenson did in the bottom half of the second what I feared the Reds would do against Redding in this hitter's park. He ripped a Redding fastball over the CF fence, making up for the homer he was denied on Saturday, and locked the game up again almost as quickly as Bagwell had unlocked it. Houston re-took the lead in the fourth when Morgan Ensberg walked, Bagwell moved him up on a groundout, and Kent drove him home with a base hit to CF. But as soon as Houston grabbed the advantage, Cincinnati wrested it back, with a decisive show of strength. In the bottom of the fourth, a Bagwell error on a ball hit by D'Angelo Jimenez gave the Reds a runner to lead off the inning. Redding, who struck out eight in the game, showed every sign of being able to pitch past the error, striking out Sean Casey looking and getting Ruben Mateo on a pop to SS. But in the same way that Redding frequently has trouble putting away individual batters after getting ahed in the count, he also has trouble getting the final out of an inning. The irrepresible Stenson struck again with a single to CF, and Castro, today's Reds' starter at 3B, destroyed a fastball that was much too much over the plate. Like that, the Reds were ahead, 4-2, and although half the game remained to be played, I, for one, didn't hold out all that much hope for a big comeback.

Houston began the sixth with singles to CF from Ensberg and Bagwell, but here came the obligatory, rally-killing double play ball from Jeff Kent. We all knew that Kent's susceptibility to the double play was a limitation of his game that we were going to have to trade for his home run power, but double plays are still frustrating to watch. Except, glory be, this one wasn't a double play. Somehow, Kent beat it out at 1B (did the belly flop slide help? I doubt it) and Ensberg scored. Bagwell moved up, and the Astros were in position to tie.

Yet, if anyone needed evidence of just how poorly the Astros have been doing in August with runners in scoring position, he or she would need to look no further than the at-bats of Lance Berkman and Richard Hidalgo. I'd be the last person in the world to de-value with malicious intent the recent homers these two gentlemen have hit in the Astros' cause, but the homers alone from them are not enough. In fact, if a power hitter is not routinely getting singles and doubles over a broad stretch of games, the odds are he won't be hitting home runs over that stretch, either, because he won't be seeing balls in the zone unless, as was the case yesterday and in Chicago, he gets a mistake right out over the plate. The Astros need the heart of the order to produce every kind of hit and produce them abundantly. They need hitters who are willing and able to block out the heat of August and September, block out the pains and frustrations of bad prior at-bats, and get hits when they matter most: with runners in scoring postion and a pitcher on the mound doing his best to prevent you from getting those hits. Berkman went down swinging and Hidalgo grounded out to 2B.

The failure to punch the tying run across effectively ended Houston's hopes for the day. Adam Everett beat out a hit in the seventh and pinch-hitter Orlando Merced walked, but Ryan Wagner overpowered Porter on a strikeout and an Ensberg grounder forced Everett at 3B. I was a little surprised that Dave Miley didn't stick with the hard-throwing Wagner inti the eighth and also surprised that Houston couldn't get to the nondescript Felix Heredia, but such are the small daily surprises of the game and such are the ways of a slump. Bagwell walked to open the eighth, but Heredia eliminated the pressure before the Astros could even apply it. Kent grounded into a 5-4-3 double play, and Berkman flied to RF. The middle of the order thus failed again, and Houston still trailed by a run.

Would it have made any difference if Jimy Williams had monkeyed even more with the hitters he sent up in the ninth against Chris Reitsma? There's a neat tidiness to pinch-hitting Gregg Zaun for Ausmus, catcher for catcher, and Biggio for Porter, centerfielder for centerfielder, in the event that spot came up, but the problem is, the latter spot never came up. Given the stats of the men before it, it never had a chance to. Hidalgo flied to CF, and Zaun struck out. Surely, I asked myself, Biggio would be a better choice to hit for Ausmus than Zaun? And lately, he's even money with Blum, who hit for Everett, in overall production, and a better bet for a homer, which the Astros needed before the final out of the game was recorded. Was no one watching what Biggio did Friday night, or is shuffling the lineup card in the dugout so difficult a task that a strict position-for-position order must be maintained?

I'm not feeling as crabby as the tone of these questions implies, but I do ask them, and I think they should be asked. A two-week, take-no-prisoners homestand of historic success would please me immensely, but even that wouldn't wipe away the dissatisfaction I have with an Astros team that is no better than it was last season, is producing far less offense than it should, and is being skippered in ways that often I just don't understand and with which I frequently do not agree.