Oof. One shutout and it's like a graveyard in here. Thass kewl, we'll go on a bombing run soon and faith will be restored. You can't keep this many good hitters down for long. It may be a very, very long time before the next time we put a zero on the board.
So, official ruling, do I get to be a tiny bit smug about calling Felix's return to decent velocity? I especially liked the arm slot he found to hit the outside black against lefties. He just kinda loosened the elbow and slingshotted some 91-93 darts onto the corner, and only Nori "80% of Ichiro" Aoki could do anything with them. Long live the King, even if he is only SP2 behind the original Godfather, Zeus himself.
Anyone notice that Felix only needed 65 pitches to go 5 last night? And he was picking up steam before the injury. If he goes two more shutout innings, tacks on a K or two, we'd be looking at a helluva start. If the rule is once again that you can only score on Felix via A). swinging out of your shoes like Springer and Correa and hoping your lineup hits one or two moonshots over the course of the whole game, or B). BABIP bermuda triangles on popups and mediocre grounders... he'll be pushing 18 wins this year, no?
P.S. Serious question: if Dallas Keuchel is the God of Pitcher's Fielding Practice, why did we try three bunts against him? I mean, he was an ace at the top of his game, and we had fast hitters trying to make something happen, so the strategy makes sense in a vacuum. But those were 2.5 perfect bunts, BABIP of like .750, and Squarebeard charges them like a shortstop, makes a freaking jump throw on one of them, and suddenly that's three easy outs. The man won a Gold Glove last year! If that's how he plays bunts, having them in the gameplan was a terrible idea. We wasted some really perfect bunting efforts, and wasted some outs in the process.