And we've also seen plenty of examples of guys who were dealing one minute and not dealing the next. It's just the nature of the game.
I think part of this is that Cora probably let Houck know before the game he was likely going to pitch one inning. Houck therefore is focused on getting 3 outs and goes all out trying to do so, with no thoughts of holding anything back to pitch a second inning.
We can debate stuff like this all day (and we do), but the bottom line is that Cora is the guy who has to make the calls and live and die with them.