HOUSTON – The way this road trip has looked so far for the Cincinnati Reds, manager Terry Francona was right to sweat when an 11-run lead was quickly knocked down to four after the Astros batted around against two of his pitchers in the third inning Saturday night.

The numbers do not lie: they are now, once again, a sub-.500 baseball team. And the next club on the docket is the Houston Astros, a club on the tail end of a generational dynasty that has twice won World Series titles since 2017 (and appeared in another pair of World Series, too).