Luke Hochevar's greatest hits

Luke Hochevar and I have a weird player/blogger relationship. I sponsor his b-r page but when I write a positive post he pitches poorly, I ignore him and he's lights out. Lately I have left him alone and he's been money on the mound. So despite my inner voice screaming at me to leave well enough alone I thought I'd do a Luke post. His last four starts he has 3.19 ERA in 31 innings with 28 strikeouts and just 6 walks. His last start he had a season high 10 strikeouts in seven innings, and despite giving up just one run he got stuck with the loss (this is called getting Greinke'd). What amazed me about that start was that according to his game score of 69 it was his third best start of the year and seventh best of his career. I thought it would've been higher but six times in his career he has had a game score of 70 or better (his greatest hits, if you will).

Date	Tm	Opp	Rslt	App,Dec	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	Pit	Str	GSc
2009-09-18	KCR	CHW	W 11-0	SHO9 ,W	9.0	3	0	0	1	5	0	105	76	85
2009-06-12	KCR	CIN	W 4-1	CG 9 ,W	9.0	3	1	1	1	3	1	80	57	79
2010-05-20	KCR	CLE	W 9-3	CG 9 ,W	9.0	4	3	3	2	7	1	107	75	72
2009-06-29	KCR	MIN	W 4-2	GS-7 ,W	7.0	2	0	0	4	2	0	102	62	71
2010-04-07	KCR	DET	W 3-2	GS-8	7.2	5	0	0	1	2	0	89	57	70
2009-07-25	KCR	TEX	W 6-3	GS-7 ,W	7.0	5	3	2	0	13	1	112	76	70

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

It really seems like he has turned a corner, which I think I've said before (like a dozen times). He has pitched at least six innings in nine of his twelve starts so at the very least he has graduated from the Jeff Suppan School of Eating Innings. His ERA on the season is an unimpressive 4.74 but if you toss out just one start his ERA drops to 3.78, which is impressive (for a Royals starter not named Greinke anyway, well not the current Greinke but you get my point). And really the 3.78 is more indicative of his 2010 performance, he is in the process of breaking out but because of one disastrous start it's hard to tell.

Now I realize he'll get shelled in his next start but I wanted to throw him some props anyway, he's been fun to watch even if the team he plays for hasn't been.