So has Evan Sobel.

Things worked out for everybody Wednesday night.

Sobel's second-inning double - his first extra-base hit of the summer - helped the Paints snap a six-game losing streak and provided the punch Daryl Arreola needed to pick up the win in his first start of the year. It all added up to a 3-2 win for Chillicothe over Slippery Rock on the eve of the team going back on the road.

"It felt great," said Sobel, who scored the decisive third run after his RBI double in the second. "After I came around and scored, I was in the dugout trying to hold back a smile. It didn't work, but it feels awesome."

Behind Arreola, that second inning was the one that made the difference. Inserted in the rotation only recently, the closer-turned-starter turned in seven shutout innings, giving up six hits and no walks along the way.

"Daryl has great stuff, which is why he could be a good closer," Paints manager Mark Mason said. "But he also has four pitches, and he can throw all of them for strikes. Which is why he can be a good starter."

He was Wednesday.

Arreola's outing marked just the seventh time this summer a Paints starter has pitched as many as seven innings, and it was the first time all year a starter has worked seven shutout innings.

Dealing like that, it wasn't an easy move for the Paints to get him out of the game for the eighth.

"I'll be honest, I don't like to get a starter out of there when he's got a shutout going," Mason said. "But we talked all night long, and he knew what I was thinking and I knew what he was thinking. It was kind of a unique situation (with it being Arreola's first start of the year), and when we talked after the sixth, he told me he could give me one more and that was it.

"But for Daryl to go out there and give me seven, that was huge."

Eric Teall worked the final two innings for his fourth save.

The Paints offense certainly made it a little easier to pitch Wednesday night. For the first time in almost a week, Chillicothe was not facing a deficit after the first couple innings. Instead, thanks to Dan Cummins' first-inning double and an error on Slippery Rock's Jon Dandridge, Arreola was working with a lead right from the start.

"It's big to get a lead early," Mason said. "I think that might have helped Daryl relax a little bit."

Relax.

That's what Evan Sobel was trying to do.

"I'm hitting .140-something, I haven't played in a while - you kind of dread opening your locker every day, thinking that red tag is going to be there," the right-handed hitter said, talking about the way players were cut from Indians training camp in the movie "Major League". "I worked on a lot of things today in the cage, and I messed around a little bit with swinging left-handed.

"I just felt real comfortable doing it, and (in the game) I was just trying to get the same feeling from the right side. Basically I was just trying to relax at the plate. Even some of the other guys have told me to just take a big, deep breath and let it out slow. It's like my dad used to say, I was going through paralysis by analysis. Sometimes you just have to do it and not think too much."

Sobel did it in the second inning.

It started when John Torres stole second after reaching on an error by Sliders shortstop Phil Butch. A groundout by Josh Miller moved Torres to third, and it brought up Sobel in a situation the Paints had a lot of luck with. In fact, for the year, the Paints are hitting only .213 with runners in scoring position.

But that's analysis. There was no paralysis to Sobel in that situation. Hitting ninth in his first start in five days, Sobel ripped an RBI double down the right-field line, plating Torres and building the Paints' lead to 2-0. One out later, Travis Garcia gave his team the final run it needed with a run-scoring, two-out single to center, pushing Sobel across the plate and giving him the chance to steal that smile in the dugout.

"I'm just happy to contribute to the team," Sobel said. "Right now, I just feel good."

Slippery Rock got their only runs in the eighth, when Kevin Holley touched up Teall for a two-run home run before Teall shut down the Sliders in order in the ninth.

For the Paints, the win came at a good time.

"It was a good win to break the losing streak and to get us going," Mason said. "We needed a jump-start, and hopefully tonight was it."

The Paints hit the road today for a brief two-game series in Florence before coming back to VA this weekend for the final home series of the season's first half. Today, Brian Marshall (0-2, 6.14) will get the ball in the 7:05 p.m. game.

The Dirt