Astros late rally falls short to the Cardinals

The Houston Astros allowed the Cardinals to get out to a 6-0 lead and ended up scoring five runs in the final two innings before the Cardinals shut the door on the Astros’ rally. Kyle Lohse pitched a great game for the Cardinals going 7 innings, not giving up a run and striking out two but the bullpen for the Cardinals made the game interesting. Ryan Franklin and Trever Miller came in and gave up three runs before registering a single out. What is even more impressive is that Franklin gave up those two runs on only four pitches.

J.A. Happ had a decent outing going 5 innings, giving up 5 hits and striking out five, however he struggled with the long ball giving up two solo shots, one to Matt Holliday in the fourth and one to Tyler Greene in the fifth. When Happ left the game the Astros were still in this game as they were only down 2-0 but the bullpen gave up four runs over the next two innings and gave the Cardinals a lead that was just too much for the Astros to overcome. Enerio Del Rosario gave up three runs in 1.2 innings of work and Jose Valdez gave up one run in his .1 innings.

The Astros big hitters tonight were Angel Sanchez, who went 2 for 5 with one RBI and one run scored, Joe Inglett, who got a rare start went 2 for 4 with two runs scored, and Brett Wallace continues to be the Astros best hitter, going 3 for 4 with one RBI. With the good comes the bad, and it seems like Chris Johnson and Carlos Lee continues to fall into that category. Lee went 0 for 4 and saw his average drop to .198 while Johnson went 0 for 3 and dropped his average to .190. Both players were expected to play key roles in the Astros offense this year and have not lived up to expectation at this point in the season. Tomorrow, the Astros will be looking to get a big performance from Nelson Figueroa in the final game of the series.

Brandon Croce is the Lead Writer for Climbing Tal’s Hill. Click here to follow him on Twitter and click here to follow CTH.