Cole Hamels is awesome. He’s one of the best pitchers in the National League and one of the best young pitchers in baseball. He is the Phillies key this postseason. If he can shut the Brewers down they have a very good chance of winning this series. Here’s the thing though.
Hamels is up to a career-high 220 1/3 innings, or 37 more than last season. He gutted it out for six innings Thursday to pick up his 14th win, but he was consistently up in the zone and didn’t have anything close to his best stuff or command.
Jerry Crasnick posted that about a week ago and he settled on 227.3, 44 more than last year. Since then Hamels got to skip his start to rest up for today’s game. Will it matter? Last year, after settting his previous career high in innings, Hamels put up this line:
6.2 IP 3H 4BB 3ER 7K (115 pitches)
Terrible? No, but if the Brewers can get a similiar performance today they are in a very good position to win. The key is to have the lead or be tied when Hamels leaves the game, but also getting him out of there before they can go to Brad Lidge.
