Hamels' wife, Heidi, was about to give birth to their first child, he knew she was close, so maybe that too led to the unsavory display, or the four runs that followed over his five innings of work. And maybe he should get a pass because of that, too. But the bottom line is that we once again do not know what to expect when he takes the mound tonight against the Dodgers for Game 1 of the National League Championship Series.
Can he be Cole Hamels, hero of 2008, a pitcher who handled errors and miscues by striking out the next guy or inducing a doubleplay?
Or will we have to settle for Cole Hamels 2009? A pitcher who, manager Charlie Manuel said yesterday, could be "sailing along with no hits and all of a sudden the pitcher bloops a ball in and he can't get out of an inning and there's four or five runs in and he can't shut the inning down and we end up losing the game."
Charlie also said, "That's not a typical Cole Hamels game."
Well, yeah, Charlie, this season it is.
Hamels has been known to overthink himself into trouble. Really, it was the theme going into last postseason, after he admitted getting overhyped for his NLDS start against Colorado the year before. But Hamels' eight shutout innings against the Brewers to start last year's championship run continued his seasonlong consistency, bred by a resilience that had really not marked his career until that point.
He was 14-10 last year. He easily could have won 20 games. In 227 1/3 innings, he did not throw a wild pitch. Then, Hamels spoke of how he had grasped baseball's interdependency. "I can't control the whole game or the outcome," he said before Game 1 of the 2008 World Series. "I'm only a small part."
