Say this about the Astros: they're not afraid to put in a little overtime. After Thursday's 14-inning marathon with Atlanta, Houston has now reached extra innings 13 times in 2007, tied for fifth most in the league. That's already added 39 innings to the Astros' season.
It's hard to pinpoint a reason for all those sudden-death affairs, but Brian Moehler offered one explanation.
"We usually have pretty good starting pitching, and our bullpen's been pretty good, so most all of our games are close," he said.
Thursday was also the third time this season the Astros have gone 14 innings or more in a game. They played 16 frames with the Pirates in a 4-3 loss on April 25, then slugged it out for 17 in a 5-3 loss to the Mets on July 7.
Hyperextended contests like those are the ones that can really tax a team. The Astros didn't make it to their hotel in Miami until about 4:30 a.m. ET on Friday, so they skipped batting practice to compensate.
The bullpen also needs extra care after an outing like Thursday's. Chad Qualls, who threw a career-high three innings of relief, and Moehler, who appeared for the fourth time in five days, would likely be unavailable Friday, manager Phil Garner said.
But Garner said the real crunch will probably come Saturday, when the disrupted sleep schedule will catch up to players' bodies.
Not that anybody's complaining, of course. This just means a little extra baseball, and nobody's got a problem with that.
Rotation change: The Astros put Chris Sampson on the 15-day disabled list Friday with a sprained right ulnar collateral ligament. Matt Albers will start in his place Sunday in the series finale with the Marlins.
Albers has made eight starts for the Astros this season, most recently when he tossed five scoreless innings against the Dodgers on July 25. The right-hander last pitched Wednesday, when he allowed three runs in 1 1/3 innings against the Braves.
"He should be in pretty good shape," Garner said.
To take Sampson's roster spot, the Astros recalled left-handed reliever Stephen Randolph from Triple-A Round Rock, where he was 10-2 with a 1.90 ERA and 78 strikeouts in 52 innings. Randolph has appeared in five games for Houston this season, allowing nine runs in 4 2/3 innings.
What a relief: Entering Thursday's game, Moehler had pitched in 235 Major League games, another 125 in the Minors, plus who knows how many in high school, Little League and any other level. The veteran right-hander had been the pitcher of record hundreds of times during that span, yet there was one stat he had never garnered, not even once: a save.
That is, until now.
After six other pitchers got Houston through 14 innings Thursday, Moehler pitched a scoreless 14th to protect a one-run lead and record the first save of his life.
"It just happened to be a situation where our bullpen had been used quite a bit last the two nights out," Moehler said. "We got so deep in the game, it just had to be me."
The three other Astros who had recorded a save this season -- Brad Lidge, Qualls and Trever Miller -- had all appeared earlier in the game and been replaced. That left Moehler, who said he didn't even realize it was a save situation until after he was done.
"I knew it was a one-run game," he said, "but I was just treating it like any other game."
He got through it relatively seamlessly, too, erasing a leadoff single with a double play and then striking out Mark Teixiera swinging to end the game and put another statistical notch in his belt.
That also clinched the first career victory for Mark McLemore, who pitched a scoreless 13th. McLemore and Moehler were the sixth pair of Houston pitchers to notch their first career win and save in a game; the last came via Jose Cabrera's win and Chris Holt's save on July 9, 1999.
Going deep thoughts: Mike Lamb's grand slam Thursday was the seventh by an Astro this season. Johnny Estrada is the only opponent to hit a slam against Houston in 2007. It was also the second pinch-hit homer by Lamb this season, the fifth by an Astro, and the first pinch-hit grand slam for Houston since Jason Lane did it on Aug. 29, 2006. The four-run deficit it erased was the second-largest gap the Astros have come back from in a victory this season, behind only the five-run deficit they rallied back from against Cincinnati on April 19.
On deck: The Astros and Marlins will play the middle contest of their three-game set at 6:05 p.m. CT on Saturday. Jason Jennings (2-7, 6.03 ERA), who delivered the game-winning run Thursday with a pinch-hit single, will oppose Sergio Mitre (5-5, 3.55).
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