Tonight at 7:10 P.M., Jason Schmidt died again. 

After the 1st inning, he, once again, rose from the dead: 

Ever have one of those moments when you joke around with someone and then give this crazy hypothetical situation and laugh because you know it’d never come true? 

Tonight was something like that.  As Jason Schmidt was self destructing in the first inning, in order to humor ourselves through the pain, it was fun to joke with some friends at the possibility of him actually somehow 1. finishing the 1st inning and 2. going four more innings and win the game. 

Except, well… it actually happened. 

As you are aware, Jason Schmidt started off tonight’s game about as badly as you could have imagined.  He wasn’t fooling anyone and I honestly didn’t think he was going to get an out, much less make it out of the first.  It wasn’t pretty at all, but somehow Joe Torre stuck with him and it paid off.  The offense put on a nice display, but the story of tonight is Schmidt.  He went 5 IP, 3 ER, 5 H, 3 BB, and 2 K’s and was far from what you’d call dominating, but managed to settle down significantly after the first and get out of some jams to pick up his win which, on a side note, somewhere Randy Wolf is cursing out the Dodgers offense screaming: “You help give Jason freaking Schmidt a win, but not me?!”  Nonetheless, the array of pitches for Schmidt went anywhere from a mid-80′s fastball to a curve ball in the high 60′s and Schmidt mixed up his pitches well enough to where, while he gave up quite a bit of fly balls, he only allowed one hit after the first inning. 

While he could end up easily imploding from here on out, tonight’s game was definitely a success and, sans the first inning, a nice return from Jason Schmidt.  It’s been an incredibly rough road and, sure, while he’s making a ton of money, I still can’t imagine it easy to go back on the mound knowing you are a shell of what you used to be, but Schmidt has tried to make the adjustments and all of the hard work over the past two years finally came together and proved successful… at least for tonight.  Again, if tonight is his best, then it’s not something that you’re going to find to be particularly reliable over the long haul, but what he did tonight at least warrants some props.  It’s definitely one more win than I thought we’d ever get out of him, and, for that matter, one more start than I thought we’d ever get out of him, but overall, a nice game that could have ended far differently after that first inning. 

Well done, tonight, Schmidt.