Bogey At 9 O'Clock, Bogey At 9 O'Clock, Astros Beat Marlins 3-2

You want to know why it's hard to analyze baseball scientifically? You want to know why we talk about run expectancies, pythagorean records and try like crazy to predict what will happen next with the Astros?

Games like this are the answer.

Houston has been playing close games all season, but coming up short in 1-run affairs to now. All the evidence over the previous years suggests that success or failure in those games is more luck-induced than anything. Good teams will invariably even things out.

It looks like Houston may be a better team than almost everyone thought, as they found a little luck in the eighth inning Tuesday and evened out those 1-run games a bit. Houston didn't deserve to win this game, but they did. They scratched out runs despite lacking extra base hits in most of the past three games. They had a young guy just up from Triple-A going head to head with an accomplished major leaguer in Anibal Sanchez.

And yet, they still won.

This is the second time this season that Bogusevic has come up with a very clutch hit and the third time, going back to his huge grand slam last season. Does that mean he's got the clutch gene? Has he been hanging out with Derek Jeter? Do we have to start calling him Captain? Can I be called Captain?

But, I digress...This was such a great effort by a scrappy team. Escorpion beating out that ball in the sixth before coming around to score the tying run was huge. Aneury's performance was equally huge, even if he did give up a few ill-timed solo home runs. And that doesn't even account for another solid performance from the bullpen, including another Myers save.

So, yeah, this wasn't one Houston should have won. But, they did and now they're a game away from .500 much, much later than I anticipated them being there. Luck is a mysterious lady, I guess.