Luke Hochevar pitched the game of his life en route to a rare win for the Royals. Hochevar struck out 13 Rangers Saturday night, against zero walks and just five hits. I'm absolutely floored by Luke's performance tonight. Floored.
In Hochevar's last three starts, he's struck out 27 batters and walked just one in 19.1 innings. When did this guy turn into Zack Grienke on a hot streak?
Amazingly, the Royals did enough at the plate and in the 'pen to get him a win, thanks in part to a nice night by the top of the order.
The game's unexpected drama began in the eighth inning, when Joakim Soria appeared. After a week-long controversy regarding Soria's usage, Hillman went against his previous statements swearing that Soria would not be used for anything beyond a four-out save. Some are suggesting that this may have been Gibbons's call, but I would find that extremely unlikely. Bench coaches just don't make a decision like that. Sure, there's a part of me that wants to blast Hillman for being a hypocrite, but that wouldn't be totally fair. I'd rather have him start making better decisions after tough experiences -- I believe this is called "learning" -- than being consistently dumb.