Captain Anti-Jinx

A couple weeks ago during a Phils-Expos game, I wrote the following about Randy Wolf on Philliesphans.com:

I'm getting a little depressed about Randy Wolf.

It's not that I don't think he'll turn it around this season; if he's healthy, I'm confident he will. But with yet another slow start this year, I think the third in his last four seasons, it's just starting to look to me like he's never going to grow into the wire-to-wire staff leader I'd hoped he would be. He's young enough to resume a path toward stardom, and lefties often don't really blossom until late, but his forward progress seems to have stalled.

Not that there's anything at all wrong with winning 12-16 games every year with 200 innings and an ERA between 3.50 and 4, but maybe because he's homegrown and just seems to be a likeable guy, I had hoped for more.

Wolf had allowed three runs in the first inning that day, and as I wrote he was trying to wriggle out of a jam in the third, which he managed to do. He held the Expos off the board the rest of the way and left that game with a 4-3 lead but wound up with a no-decision as the Phils eventually won, 5-4.

As it happened, Wolf started a stretch of 21 straight scoreless innings that afternoon, which he extended with a complete-game shutout against Montreal last weekend and seven more last night against Arizona as the Phils won 4-0.

Granted, these aren't exactly the '27 Yankees he's faced, but it's still unusually nice to see myself apparently proven wrong...