Well, you might could call the homer to Corey Hart a Bad Inning, but really it was one of only 2 really hard hit balls. and he went 7 IP with 5 K – including striking out the side in the 5th, 3 singles, 1 homer, 2 walks, 1 run. And absolutely not ONE inning in which he had even the littlest bit of sudden loss of control. Absolutely teh awesomeness.

And the Crew just beat him UP last month – 3 homers, 7 runs over 5.2 IP.

But today, he just had everything working and the ump didn’t gift him with any close strikes and, in fact, on Ishikawa’s walk, 2 balls were clearly in the strike zone. He threw 117 pitches – really surprised me that Millsie-poo let him go back out for the 7th when he had reached 100 after the 6th – 73 strikes. Still not up to Wandy’s masterpiece the other night though.

The Astros, in general have basically stopped hitting anything except grounders. Hard for any pitcher to win anything without run support. Last 8 games, Stros have scored exactly 12 runs and it is more than tough to win with numbers like that. Bud Norris won 1-0 on an UER.

Lucas Harrell actually pitched very well last night – got stuck with 2 runs because Jed Lowrie fumbled an easy GIDP ball . But trouble is that his hitters didn’t do diddly vs Joe EFF Blanton, who has either been facing BAD teams or he’s suddenly learned to pitch in his contract year. The guy hasn’t had an ERA under 4 since 2007.

sigh