Astros sink Pirates

On a rainy night in Pittsburgh the Astros outlasted a sputtering Pirates team to take a 4-1 victory. Astros starter Brett Myers was solid, earning his first win since a complete game effort back on June 17. Myers may have gone the distance again tonight had he not made a throwing error with two outs in the eighth.

Myers threw only 92 pitches before exiting with a 2-1 lead. Wesley Wright came in and threw six consecutive pitches out of the strike zone before getting Garrett Jones to pop out. Mark Melancon pitched a scoreless ninth for his seventeenth save of the year. Humberto Quintero had a big night as well. “Q” drove in three runs, including a pair in the ninth inning.

The Pirates failure to execute cost them dearly tonight. They were unable to turn what looked like an easy double play in the second inning, allowing Houston to tally a pair of runs in the frame. In the bottom of that same inning some questionable strategy cost the Buccos a chance to tie the game. Ryan Doumit has been the team’s hottest hitter of late. After Doumit launched a pair of foul balls with homerun distance, Neil Walker inexplicably tried to steal second base. Walker was thrown out, by that man Quintero, and Doumit went on to blast a round-tripper with no one on base. There was no more scoring until the ninth, when Andrew McCutchen was able to run down a line drive off the bat of Jimmy Paredes but had the ball bounce off the heel of his glove. Paredes would wind up at second on the play and eventually score.

These two struggling teams square off again tomorrow at 6:05 CDT. It will be a matchup between two lefties . J.A. Happ (5-15, 5.71) goes for the Astros against Brian Burres (1-0, 1.69)