The Astros' energy level seemed to mirror that of a subdued PNC Park, which drew an announced crowd of 9,392 on the same night the city of Pittsburgh was hosting Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals between the Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings.

The few who took in the Astros-Pirates game watched the home team prevail, 5-2, thanks to timely hitting aided by a sluggish Houston defense that could have prevented at least two runs with a tiny bit more effort.

"We didn't give ourselves much of a chance defensively tonight," first baseman Lance Berkman said.

Berkman took the blame for the most glaring blunder, in the form of a botched rundown that allowed Jack Wilson to advance to second with nobody out in the fifth frame. The umpires ruled that Berkman had halted Wilson's path to second, and called obstruction.

Manager Cecil Cooper was told by the umpiring crew that the baseline was determined by where the runner was positioned.

"They said whenever Lance started taking it back toward second, whatever baseline [Wilson] established, that was it," Cooper said. "He was still within his rights to go outside like he did. Those were the interpretations of the rules; we have to ride by that."

That play proved costly when Wilson scored on a Nate McLouth single just past the reach of Miguel Tejada, giving the Bucs a 4-1 lead.

"That was my fault and it shouldn't happen," Berkman said. "It turned out to be a pretty big play because they ended up scoring."

That play wasn't the only one that hurt. Tejada dashed several steps to his right on McLouth's single and appeared to be in good position to make a play, but the ball barely snuck under his glove and rolled into left field.

In the fourth, had Carlos Lee run a half-step quicker to field Jason Bay's sinking liner, he may have caught the ball for out No. 2. Instead, Xavier Nady followed by drawing a walk off Roy Oswalt, and Adam LaRoche snuck a base hit just past the glove of a diving Kazuo Matsui, which allowed Bay to score from second.

With two outs in the inning, Oswalt's former battery mate, catcher Raul Chavez, lined a base hit to left, plating two more runs to give the Bucs a 3-1 lead.

"If it's two inches either way, it's an out," Oswalt said.

But clearly, this was not a banner night for a defense that was solid for most of the first two months of the season. In this game, it looked sluggish.

"It certainly looks that way when you've got balls that are just barely out of reach," Berkman said. "There were certainly plays that everybody would say we should have made. If you make those plays, it's a completely different ballgame, and while we may not have done much offensively, it might have been enough, just like [on Tuesday] night. We didn't do a whole lot, but it was enough because we got great pitching and played good defense."

The other problem, of course, was the offense. The Astros have scored two or fewer runs every game in the last week. Since scoring eight off the Cardinals to open the road trip, the Astros have scored 10 runs over seven games.

"You hate to keep saying it -- it sounds like a revolving door when you keep saying it -- but we ran into some good pitchers," said Ty Wigginton, who homered off Zach Duke in the third inning. "Duke was outstanding tonight. He moved the ball in-out, up-down, changed speeds. That's what he does. He was on his game."

Oswalt wasn't quite as dazzling. With no help from the defense, he yielded nine hits and four runs, three of which were earned. He felt his breaking stuff had improved, but in what is becoming a recurring theme this year, he ran up his pitch count early and had thrown 105 by the time he was finished after six.

"I just had a lot of pitches," he said. "I threw a lot of pitches to two or three different batters, and they fouled off a bunch and I wasn't able to get to the seventh."

Said Cooper: "They had some soft base hits. They hit some balls off the end a little bit. They didn't really hit him hard, but they stayed in a lot of at-bats. That makes it tough on a guy."