Rough outing for Derek Holland last night, coming in in relief of Scott Feldman. But then, that's part of the learning process with young players, particularly pitchers. And it is part of the reason you want to break them in through the bullpen when possible, although ideally, you don't want them coming in to face a future Hall of Famer with the bases loaded in a close game.
The bigger problem was the offense once again crapping out, this team going scoreless in the final six innings. It is incredibly frustrating to me to see Hank Blalock continue to channel his inner Josh Hamilton and hack at the first pitch continuously...Blalock is seeing only 3.3 pitches per plate appearance so far this year, which goes a long way towards explaining his 1 walk on the season and his .277 OBP. And he'll continue to periodically hit the ball a long way to right field, while more often he'll try to pull a first pitch breaking ball on the outside part of the plate and ground out to shortstop.
Jeff Wilson's game story focuses on Hamilton's trip to the d.l. and Scott Feldman impressive, if truncated, outing. Based on the quotes from Ron Washington, it sounds like Jarrod Saltalamacchia's unavailability played a significant role in the decision to make a move with Hamilton now.
Wilson's notes piece indicates that Saltalamacchia wasn't at the park yesterday, along with having some comments from Vicente Padilla about how he threw earlier this week and Derrick Turnbow's release.
Max Ramirez says he's here and willing to help the team however he can, but he may not even get into a game before he heads back down. I suspect once Saltalamacchia's eye situation clears up, Max will head back down and Brandon Boggs will come back up.