Offense Shows Up, Bullpen Blows Up. Astros Lose 8-7 To Pirates

Not much to say about this one. Hitting good, pitching bad. Astros lose again.

Pitching

The pitching lines are just wrong tonight. Lucas Harrell went five innings allowed three earned runs on nine hits, zero walks and nine strikeouts. Only Fernando Martinez came on in the sixth and allowed Harrell's two runners in the sixth to score. so Harrell's final line has five earned runs instead of three and Fernando Rodriguez and his 6.46 ERA had one hit, on strikeout and zero runs an inning pitched. This people is why we use FIP, xFIP and SIERA more extensively on this site.

Even with Rodriguez allowing the last two of Harrell's five earned runs to score, the Astros still held a one run lead heading into the seventh inning. Enter Brandon Lyon, who allowed the Pirates to take the lead on a Garrett Jones two-run homer. He would also pitch an uneventful eighth inning.

Luckily for the bullpen the offense went back to work and tied it in the ninth. Enter Wesley Wright, who gave up the game winning homerun to former Astros farmhand Drew Sutton.

Hitting

The goat of the last two weeks decided to finally show up this evening, scoring runs in the second, third, fourth sixth and ninth innings.Overall they scored seven runs on 13 hits and three walks.

Jordan Schafer, Carlos Lee, Lucas Harrell and Jed Lowrie all had two hits. In the case of Lowrie he also contributed a walk and the tieing run in the ninth inning. Lucas Harrell reached via two bunt singles. Chris Snyder was the other Astro to reach base multiple times with one hit and two walks. Jason Castro pinch hitting for Brandon Lyon in the top of the ninth inning hit a double down the right field line scoring Lowrie and tieing the game.

Defense

No errors for the Astros and nothing that sticks out for the Astros defense, good or bad.

Wednesday

12:35 PM CT Dallas Keuchel vs Kevin Correia.