Well Cole Hamels showed Phillies fans today that he wasn't in the right mindset to be pitching game 2 of the NLDS. Apparently his wife went into labor following his departure from the game. We can only assume this was due to him giving up a 2 strike to the pitcher and a homerun to a guy, Torrealba, who hasn't homered since May 6th. If his wife going into labor was dominating his mind instead of focusing on the next pitch, then he shouldn't have been on the mound. We had J.A. Happ, Joe Blanton, and Pedro Martinez waiting in the wings to take his place. If he wasn't fully, 100% prepared for this game, he shouldn't have been in there.
And could someone tell me who was on the mound for the first 5 innings for the Rockies? Because it most certainly wasn't Aaron Cook, a sinker-baller with a cheesy mohawk who can't break 90. It's also tough to score runs when your leadoff hitter goes MIA. But this all stems from Cole Hamels. He pitched poorly, but it was even worse than it looked. The first batter of the game, Cole got ahead in the count and continued to nibble until he got it to a 3-2 count in which he gave up a single to right. Go after the batters and stop worrying about making a mistake. Make being aggressive your only mistake, not getting ahead 0-2, then going to 1-2, 2-2, 3-2...
Off day on Friday and we can only assume Pedro will be on the mound on Saturday, but we'll see. Game 2 is the most important game in every series, and they lost it. You know that loss of anxiety that I talked about before? Yea, well it's back with a side of no confidence to go along with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment