Having just started against the St. Louis Cardinals in his previous outing, you would understandably be a little nervous that many of those hitters might have just a little extra comfort against Cole Hamels yesterday.
But you would have been wrong, because Hamels not only pitched well again, he turned in his best outing of the year:
The 36th career double-digit strikeout game for @ColeHamels!#EverybodyIn pic.twitter.com/ze5wiepLix
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) June 7, 2019
In fact, by game score (89), yesterday was actually Hamels’ best start since August of 2016!
On the day, Hamels allowed just three hits and one walk over his 8.0 scoreless innings, striking out 10 along the way. The frustrated swings he was getting all day told you the story of how impressively he was commanding his stuff. He got an incredible 22 swinging strikes out of his 99 pitches.
The outing lowered Hamels’ season ERA to 3.24, which is 25% better than league average in the current environment.