This game can be boiled down to just a few things. Kevin Millwood & Brandon Boggs.
Kevin Millwood came off the DL on Friday, and threw a gem, the kind of performance you don’t expect from a pitcher making his first start off the DL. I think his exit was probably due to the DL, as he left after six innings, having given up just five hits and a single run. He threw 86 pitches, so it must have been a “pitch count” thing. Eddie Guardado was quite good following up Millwood. Eddie struck out two of the three batters he faced in a 1-2-3 inning. Jack Benoit had a scoreless frame, as did CJ Wilson, who got the save. But most importantly to our pitching performance – NO WALKS! Yeah, no walks will always help out. But it was a really great performance by our staff We allowed just seven hits overall, and a single run. Really good stuff there.
Offensively, we had nine hits, and five of them were doubles. Two of THOSE doubles were by Brandon Boggs, who had all three RBI’s in this game. Two of the runs scored were by Josh Hamilton, who is usually involved with runs by his bat, not by his feet. :) Still, a win is a win, and it was a good, crisp (2:37) game, with fantastic pitching, and timely hitting providing us with the win.
The game ended cool, on a 4-3 double play where Ian Kinsler had to make a play after crashing into a runner who was trying to avoid being doubled off. Let’s see if we can get over .500 on Saturday – something we’ve had issues breaking through on.