Jameson Taillon desperately needed to find his footing early against the Astros on Sunday afternoon in Houston.

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Taillon was coming off back-to-back four-inning outings against the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals with unwanted results — he allowed 13 earned combined runs in the two starts, adding up to a whopping 14.63 ERA. Eight of those earned runs came from home runs.

On Sunday, the Astros couldn’t string many hits together against Taillon, but they had another weapon ready.

When leadoff man and former Cub Isaac Paredes stepped into the box in the bottom of the first inning, he inflicted the peskiest of damage: A 12-pitch at-bat, with eight foul balls and seven in a row. The saga ended with Paredes lining a soft single into right field, leaving Taillon with nothing to show for his work.

“I’ve maybe had one other game in my career like that,” Taillon told reporters after the game. “I think it was Joey Votto, where, right off the bat (he) just saw a ton of pitches. (Paredes) got a hit on a really good pitch. It was one of those, ‘Man, this is how it’s been going for me,’ moments.”

Taillon got out of the inning unscathed but with a major dent in his pitch count, which already stood at 31.

“I don’t know how much of that was planned, or if it just happened,” Taillon said of Paredes’ approach. “He’s a tough at-bat. He doesn’t strike out much — I knew that going in. That screwed the pitch count a little bit, though.”

From there, Taillon struggled with efficiency as Houston continued to fight off his offerings. In the three innings that followed, he threw 17, 22 and 20 pitches, respectively. Houston had fouled off 31 of his pitches by the end of Taillon’s day, a number bested this season only by Seattle Mariners hitters against the Astros’ Hunter Brown (33) and the Washington Nationals against Hunter Greene of the Cincinnati Reds (40).

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“There wasn’t a lot of hard contact,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell told reporters after the game. “They just did a good job with foul balls, really.”

But the Astros still had just three hits and could not push a run across, so Taillon came back in the fifth to try and stick it out — even with his pitch count at 90.

A single and two outs later — complete with another double-digit pitch at-bat for Paredes — Jose Altuve dug in. Taillon’s first pitch was too high, but his next — and 107th pitch of the game — was the one Altuve wanted. With one swing of the bat, Taillon’s hard-fought battle was undone in an instant and the Cubs were back at square one.

“I knew it was gone,” Taillon said of Altuve’s two-run home run to break the scoreless deadlock. “I grew up coming to games here. I’ve seen so many balls go into the Crawford Boxes. It’s a short left field, but it also wasn’t a very good pitch.”

It was still minimal damage allowed for Taillon. and Counsell viewed his outing as much improved from the previous two.

“I thought he just mixed things up a little better,” Counsell said. “Just keeping the hitters responsible for multiple speeds, multiple areas in the strike zone.”

Taillon will be eager to move past a June in which he pitched to a 5.57 ERA in his six starts, but he was bolstered by the improvement he saw in himself.

“It’s hard to be too happy when you don’t complete five innings, but I thought that was some of the best stuff and command I’ve had all year,” Taillon said. “I’ll be better going forward, but I’m also really encouraged with the work that we’re putting in.”