For the second consecutive game, the Astros had little offense in support of their pitching. Paul Wison, Felix Heredia, and Chris Reitsma stopped Houston almost cold, limiting the ballclub to just a single run on five hits in a 3-1 Cincinnati win. The Cardinals were thus able to take full advantage of their win Saturday afternoon over the Phillies to pull into a tie with Houston for the Central lead. The Cubs, however, were pounded out in Arizona and remain a half-game back. The loss also pulls Houston down to an 8-13 record in Saturday games this season, perhaps not the most compelling statistic one might run across, but one that just happens to reflect the puzzling flatness of the last two games.

Neither Wilson nor Friday night's Cincinnati starting pitcher Seth Etherton will ever be accused of overpowering anyone, yet both of them threw change-of-speed pitches off the fastball and breaking stuff that had the Astro hitters completely baffled. Wilson got a high number of first-pitch outs and had a shockingly-easy time of it in a quick ballgame. Tim Redding (8-12) had a spell of poor control in the second inning-a hit batter and a walk--from which he could not recover, but giving up two runs in an inning or three in a game shouldn't be a reason to lose any particular game. The Astros, though, have let that happen to them two nights in a row.

The HBP and the walk both scored for Cincy after Juan Castro doubled to RF. Redding fought his composure a little bit during this sequence but, all in all, two runs weren't a bad total to allow, considering the damage that could have been done. The Reds added their final run in the fifth, when Reggie Taylor led off with a double and D'Angelo Jimenez singled one out later. Redding had decent stuff but little command of it. He struck out seven but walked four. The unevenness of his performance stands out a little more than it should because of the lack of an Astros' hitting attack. Although Houston did collect five hits, it almost felt like the Reds were tossing a no-hitter. The Astros didn't cross the plate until the seventh, and even that wasn't a vert exciting event. Richard Hidalgo bounced a ground-rule double to RF and Brad Ausmus fisted a soft fly ball single to CF to score him. Beyond that flurry, there was little else. In fact, it was Hidalgo and Ausmus who had teamed up in the fifth for two of Houston's other hits, both singles, but an Adam Everett 1-4-3 double play ball (about the only kind of double play ball that's going to double up Everett) wiped out the threat. The only other Astro hit was a one-out, second inning double to LF by Morgan Ensberg.

The offense has been completely throttled for the last eighteen innings, and the shutdown couldn't come at a worse time. I do not refer at all to the NL Central standings, which still show the Astros (67-62) atop the board, but rather to the current homestand, which shows Houston with a 2-3 mark, and to that most difficult road schedule in September, the quality and qunatity of which is not that far removed from the legendary month-long, middle-of-the-season road trip the club took in 1992 to accomodate the Republican National Convention. The Astros went, if I remember correctly, a respectable 12-14 on that trip, but the upcoming slate of road games in September, although broken up with three home games with St. Louis and a regular-season-closing homestand with the Giants and Brewers, will be played for higher stakes against better opposition. Houston is letting a great chance to build up its courage and confidence for that road test slip away in the heat of August. A 9-3 homestand is still possible, a mark that would make the two-week stay at home a profitable one in the standings, but that would now require a win Sunday and a complete sweep of the upcoming series with the Dodgers and the Padres, and that sweep is a most unlikely event, given the quality of Dodger pitching and the recent historic trouble the Padres have been in Houston's new park. There is nothing to do but hope that Houston can take a break after finishing this loss earlier than usual, catch its breath overnight, and pull its hitting attack back together starting Sunday afternoon. It will have to be a game-by-game, almost inning-by-inning effort to regain the focus that was there briefly during the Cubs' series but that has since seemed to slip away. Aside from Redding's second inning distraction, nobody did anything terribly wrong Saturday night. The club just needs to hit better--take good swings, go with the pitch, and trust in the skills they have to get themselves through this hard, unexpected and, we hope, brief slump.