Honestly, it is what it is.

The Lumberton, Texas native, Brandon Young, threw eight innings of near-perfect baseball, with the Astros’ only hit of the night being an infield single with two outs in the eighth inning from a former Oriole, Ramón Urías. I won’t lie to you, I was a bit concerned this might’ve been ruled a two-base error at first glance.

Regardless of our interpretation, the official scorer ruled it an infield single for Urías and a throwing error on Young. Just like that, Young’s perfect game was no more after 7 2/3 innings. Yaramil Hiraldo pitched a scoreless ninth inning, striking out one. An all-around embarrassing night for Houston’s lineup, especially against a pitcher in Young with a 6.70 ERA in his first 44 1/3 innings as a Major Leaguer. Alas, it was that kind of day, with the news about Josh Hader’s strained left shoulder capsule being announced earlier in the afternoon, in addition to Jeremy Peña feeling under the weather and missing Friday’s game.

With how mightily the lineup was struggling, it ultimately didn’t matter how well Framber Valdez pitched. Only a perfect game through the first eight innings would’ve sufficed. That obviously didn’t happen as Coby Mayo got hold of a changeup low in the zone and dropped it into the Crawford Boxes (they giveth and they taketh) to give Baltimore a 1-0 lead. The game, however, was still close, and I wasn’t too concerned by that point. But that all changed around the time I took my first bite of my sub for dinner and saw Gunnar Henderson’s sacrifice fly to left field in the fifth inning to score Daniel Johnson. But a poor throw from Jesús Sánchez and subsequent heads-up baserunning by Jackson Holliday allowed the Orioles to extend their lead to 3-0. A fourth run would score in the seventh inning, with Henderson’s RBI single. Shawn Dubin just poured gas on the fire in the eighth inning, though, allowing three runs and extending the deficit to 7-0.

Friday was a day to forget, unfortunately. With the Mariners’ win over the Mets, the Astros’ lead for the AL West is down to 0.5 games again. Jason Alexander gets the start on Saturday with the Orioles sending out Cade Povich.