The Florida Marlins rallied for two runs in the top of the ninth Sunday afternoon in Mexico City against a hard-luck Ricky Stone to force a 2-2 tie with the Astros. Fortunately for both ballclubs, an agreed-to tie in regulation was a perfectly all right resolution of the day, and when Adam Everett was called out on strikes to end the bottom of the ninth, both the umpires and the players made a run for the border, much to the displeasure of the less-than-full house that had come to see the game.

This afternoon's tie preserved a well-pitched game for both sides, but particularly so for Houston. Prior to Florida's rally in the ninth, the Astro staff of Tim Redding, Carlos Hernandez, Jared Fernandez, Mike Gallo, and Kirk Saarloos had held the Marlins to only six hits. Redding, Hernandez, and Fernandez were expecially exciting today because of Redding's continued impressiveness as a starting pitcher and because of the latter two men's work as possible bullpen candidates. It's probable that Hernandez will still be ticketed for New Orleans as a starting pitcher this year, but he pitched two comfortable innings in the fourth and fifth, mixing his speeds well and allowing me, if no one else, to entertain the pleasant fantasy that perhaps he could hold up as a left-handed reliever for the Astros this season. Fernandez, pitching with a pain-free back for the first time in a couple of seasons, continued his excellent work this spring, too, in the sixth. Add his name to the list of viable bullpen candidates and you can see that with Brandon Duckworth having surely already made the staff based on five scoreless innings this month, Jimy Williams and Burt Hooton have some very interesting choices to make over the next couple of weeks and the two of them have a chance to put together a 'pen of intriging variety for all the different game-situation possibilities the club will face once the regular season starts. Hypothetically, if Hernandez and Fernandez continue to throw as well as they are presently doing, as a hitter on any opposing club, I would not want to face the breaking stuff or the knuckleball of either man, followed by the heat that Duckworth, Brad Lidge, and Octavio Dotel can bring. Mike Gallo and Kirk Saarloos either kept them themselves in the hunt for a bullpen spot or delayed their re-assignment a few more days by tossing a scoreless seventh and eighth.

The only man who had trouble was Ricky Stone, but what happened to him shouldn't have happened to a dog. After getting a grounder to 2B for an out and going 0-2 on the next batter, a bleeder hit toward 3B upon which Morgan Ensberg couldn't throw fast enough gave the Marlins life. Stone might have been perturbed by the infield hit because he walked pinch-hitter Armando Rios after getting ahead of him 1-2. Brian Banks worked a full count before slapping a hit to LF to slice the Houston lead in half, and you could feel extra innings start to creep up like a storm cloud. The next man up, Hee-Seop Choi, tied it with a sharp single to CF. With the lead now at stake, Stone finally coaxed a ball his fielders could play, getting Jason Wood to rap into a nicely-turned 5-4-3 double play. As it turned out, the Astros had come within inches of winning this game, but it's hard for me to fault Stone for what happened. He was getting ahead in the count which, to me, is a far more telling sign of effectiveness than the occasional pitcher who falls behind constantly in the count and then is fortunate to make a pitch for an out. Come the regular season, Stone's going to get the strike call he didn't get today on Rios, and his fielders will make the play for him.

Maybe Tim Redding should complain about the mound every time he goes out there. The hill might have been a factor for Wade Miller in last night's loss and Redding insisted that the groundskeeper do some work on it before he began pitching this afternoon. Houston's # 5 guy was in complete command again over three innings, spacing three hits, walking one, and being part of a really weird 1-4-6-5-3 double play to end the third on a ball that he tipped and Jeff Kent kicked but that Houston still turned into two when Ensberg caught Juan Pierre rounding 1B too far. That was the second of two DPs the Astros turned for Redding; the first was a more conventional 4-3 job that ended the first.

Unfortunately, Houston had to wait until the fourth, by which time Redding had left the game, before it could score, but the club did shake loose the bats Sunday to the tune of eleven hits. They scored off Dontrelle Willis in the fourth on a good double to LF by Richard Hidalgo and a two-out single to CF by Raul Chavez. They padded the lead and gave every indication of putting the game away in the eighth when singles by Chris Burke, Charlton Jimerson, and Orlando Palmiero against Nate Bump drove home run number two. But the darker side of a still-better-than-it-has-been-lately performance with the bats is that Houston could not get runs across with lots of men on. A Jose Vizcaino strikeout ended a bases-loaded situation in the second; a strikeout and a double play screwed up a bases-loaded spot in the sixth; and yet another double play prevented the Astros from adding a run in the eighth that would have been huge. However they learn to do it, the Astros must do a better job in 2004 hitting with men on base. I'm well aware that getting those men on is a prerequisite to success, but ya gotta do more than get 'em on; ya gotta get 'em in, too. Generating baserunners has never been Houston's problem. The club's going to get men on base, and if Adam Everett continues to adapt to his new spot in the order at # 2, the Astros might have an even higher team OBA than last season. But for whatever reason, whether it's anxiety or poor plate discipline or not enough awareness of the count and the pitch selection in a given situation, the Astros are not as good as they need to be in getting all those runners home. It's only spring, and perhaps Houston will be far better in that department (at least good enough to suit me) in 2004, but the Astros' performance in these two games with RISP has reminded me too painfully of the team's shortcomings in that area the last couple of years. It's not that the Astros aren't good on offense. It's just that, with the runners they generate and the hitters they have, they ought to be really, really good at putting those runs across.

Their shortcomings today, however, were not enough to blunt the sharpness of the staff's pitching. By all the laws of physics that we know, these two games in Mexico City should have yielded enough runs to fill a taco grande. Instead, the Marlins turned in two fine performances on the hill and the Astros gave us one. A spring tie is always preferable to a loss, and Houston takes its 5-4-1 record into a needed Monday off day in Florida before the games continue Tuesday in Port St. Lucie against the Mets.