Nothing comes easy: Red Sox fighting in surprisingly tough series in Houston

They are the Houston Astros, THE HOUSTON ASTROS for crying out loud. 

Fact is, for nearly 10 years now, they have consistently been THE worst team in baseball loosing at a torrent rate so terrible that it is not even funny. As of today, they are 26 games out of a playoff spot and they are now on pace to notch their 300th loss in just the past 3 seasons at some point this year. They are 3-7 through their past 10 games but most surprisingly, they have scored 165 fewer runs than they have allowed. 

I do not need to look at a dictionary to know this: the Houston Astros are a BAD baseball team. 

But nevertheless, through the first 2 games of this series, nothing has come easy.  Looking back to game one, the story of the night was pitching. Pitching, pitching, pitching. With Lackey pitching for Boston, the sox star hurled a game that on a normal night would have undoubtedly given Boston a shot to win the game. Through 8 innings, John Lackey fanned 10 all on an ankle that he injured in the  bottom of the 2nd inning while walking none and allowing just 2 runs. Yet by the end of the night, Boston's hitting stalled and Lackey was charged with his 9th loss of the year. 

But for the Red Sox, Lackey's squandered gem was not the only shocking story line of game one. No, there was another story line, and that story line had a name...a strange one. Brett Oberholtzer came into the game unknown to the world. He had started just one game in his MLB career: a win over Baltimore and had only notched 21 innings of pro ball.  But no matter how inexperienced, Oberholtzer did not allow those young characteristics to shine through the mold as he dominated the Red Sox, pitching 7 scoreless innings and allowing just 4 hits against. Astro's pitching was on top of the world, dominating a Red Sox team that has beat together 583 runs.

They were spectacular, and at least for the first few innings of game two, that dominance seemed to carry over. After getting knocked down in order to start the 1st inning, Boston was soon faced with a different problem than simply not scoring runs. With knuckleballer: Stephan Wright on the hill for Boston, the drastic movement of his pitches seemed to fool catcher: Ryan Lavarnway, a fatal truth that soon translated into a mega 4 passed balls in the 1st inning alone: an MLB record. 

By the bottom of the 3rd inning, Boston was down 5 nothing and poised to lose their second straight against those pesky Astros. But unlike Monday's embarrassment, the Red Sox bats came alive in the final 6 frames of the game. They shot up 15 runs between the 3rd and 7th innings all to drop the Astros by 5 runs: Boston's largest scoring output since June 4th.  

You see, baseball is weird. It pits the best against the worst and hands you the most unexpected of outcomes. It makes a game look like it's over and then allows a team to erase a deficit. But most importantly, it takes a Red Sox team who won just 69 games in 2012 and turns it into one who equals that output in over 40 fewer games.