That’s back-to-back wins, for those keeping track at home.
Jason Hammel pitched excellently on a night that was simultaneously good for pitchers (cool, wind blowing in) and tough for pitchers (sufficiently cold that finding your grip couldn’t have been easy). His outing didn’t quite match that of Travis Wood the night before, but he did match the seven innings and just one run.
Although Hammel couldn’t pull off the three-run homer trick tonight, MIKE OLT! served as Travis Wood’s substitute, wrecking one the other way (into the wind). Continuing his odd stats trend, Olt’s other at bats included a fly out and two strikeouts. He has been something of a “two outcome” hitter this year so far.
Starlin Castro had a standup double and a solid single, but he easily could have had another hit as well. In the field, he looked fantastic. The young man is really having a fine start to the year, which is all the more impressive given that he missed essentially all of Spring Training, and was very slow out of the gate.
To me, though, tonight’s game belonged to Luis Valbuena …