I was at the game last night and have some general observations…

Jaime Garcia was very impressive. His fastball was in the upper 80’s to low 90’s…with his mid-range off-speed stuff (not sure if it’s a slider or something else) in the low 80’s and his curveball in the low to mid 70’s.

He had a no-hitter into the 5th inning until he gave up a very soft groundball towards the 3rd base line that he tried to field but couldn’t cleanly. I don’t think he would’ve gotten the runner anyway.

He had 6 strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings (when the game was stopped due to a thunderstorm), and didn’t give up a flyball out until the 4th inning when there were two consecutive flyball outs to the center fielder. Everything up to that point had been either a strikeout or groundout. Garcia didn’t have difficulty with many batters…just a couple that fouled off 6-7 pitches each, and he threw a lot of first pitch strikes to hitters…maybe not all, but I can’t think of a hitter he started off with ball 1.

Anyway, he looked very good…didn’t really seem to labor, and would’ve gone 7 or 8 if the game hadn’t been delayed due to rain and lightning.

Memphis looked pretty good as a team against their own lefthander (Stults), with 10 hits against him, and jumping out to an early 5-0 lead. Garcia even had an extra base hit (double). Good start for the Redbirds.

I’m catching tonight’s game as well, and looking forward to see how PJ Walters does.