Diamondbacks 2, Dodgers 4 - Manny Being Manny

Record; 57-53. Pace: 84-78. Change on last season: -3.

I guess it was inevitable, but I'd rather Ramirez had waited until we left town to hit his first home-run, simply so we wouldn't have to see the pants-wetting reaction at Dodger Stadium. Judging by that, it would appear LA fans had never seen a home-run before. Mind you, given their non-Manny leader in that category has a bare dozen, and LA are dead last in the league overall, I guess they are something of a rare event. The Dodgers were also the beneficiaries of an umpiring error - Juan Pierre's bunt rolled foul but was called fair by the home-plate umpire, Darryl Cousins. That led to Ramirez coming up with a man on and an additional run for Los Angeles.

Yeah: paging Bitter, party of one. Two long balls and the continued ineffectiveness of the offense, held to two runs for the third straight game, were what ended our four-game winning streak. Can't win 'em all, that's true: but the offensive faucet has been cut off at the source in this series, with a combined line in the past three games of just 200/.223/.330. When you face someone like Kuroda, who came in with an ERA of 9.82 over his last four starts, you certainly expect to be able to do better than four hits and one run over 7.1 innings.

However, that is all we managed: the lone run came on Montero's first long-ball of the year, and we only had one other man reach scoring position against him, until the last batter Kuroda faced, with one out in the eighth inning. That brought the tying run to the plate, and it also reached there in the ninth inning; we couldn't do anything with this late flurry of offensive activity, and took our foot off the Dodgers' neck, spurning a golden - or, at least, gold-plated - opportunity to send them four games back. We've been able to do nothing against the Dodgers' starters at all this series:
    LA starters: 19.1 IP, 15 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 11 K, 1.40 ERA
Admittedly, not that they've done much better against ours:
    AZ starters: 19 IP, 16 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 13 K, 1.89 ERA

The Petit Unit took the loss, because of the home-runs to Ramirez and Blake, though you'll generally be happy to take three runs over five innings from your #5 starter. [That's a higher Game Score than Micah has averaged over his last 14 starts since April 26] He'd only thrown 58 pitches, so I was somewhat surprised to see him pinch-hit for in the sixth, but I guess the aim was to try and kick-start the offense. It didn't work, Ojeda grounding out, and the replacement pitcher, Rosales, allowed three hits and a run in the sixth, ending our bullpen's scoreless streak.

Good to see Juan Cruz back [Peguero was sent back down, despite not having appeared in a game - so if you didn't notice his presence, that's fine!], though his first batter faced was somewhat shaky, taking ten pitches to walk Kuroda. After that, he settled down, though did allow a bloop single to Martin, which brought you-know-who to the plate with two men aboard. Cruz finished the inning off by striking Ramirez out - which is exactly the same way all of the previous four encounters between the two ended. As Grace and Sutton pointed out, we might well be seeing this encounter a few more times before the end of the season. Peña finished off with a scoreless eighth.

We were held to only five hits and a walk, our lowest figure since getting shut out 2-0 by the Cubs on July 21. Jackson was the only player to reach safely more than once, with a hit and a walk. Chris Young was 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts, leaving him 0-for-12 with five K's in this series. He looks increasingly to be suffering from a case of Quentinitis, the main symptom of which is swinging wildly at sliders down and away, out of the strikezone. While not incurable - Quentin seems to have recovered nicely, damnhimtohell - while Young is infected, it will remain a major hole, that opposing pitchers can easily exploit.

[Click to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Miguel Montero, +9.6%
God-emperor of suck: Chad Tracy, -12.8%

A solid Gameday Thread, though unfortunately, we have to implement a new rule due to abuse: non-mods [basically, anyone whose name is not listed at the bottom of the site] are limited to one picture per thread, and any subsequent ones will be deleted. This is because the posting of the same, large picture on multiple occasions brings everything to a grinding halt - and, personally, I find it tiresome, like seeing the word "Sweet!" every single time a Diamondbacks player gets a hit. Present were: DbacksSkins, AF DBacks Fanatic, soco, Azreous, kishi, Wimb, hotclaws, snakecharmer, utahdbacksfan, DiamondbacksWIn, foulpole, TwinnerA, Scrbl, luckycc, unnamedDBacksfan, garyho and 4 Corners Fan.

Coming into the series, I would have been happy to settle for a spliy, but after the first two wins, I now feel greedy, and if we "only" get those two victories, I'll feel that this was a lost opportunity. Davis takes the mound today, and it is, of course, the Mark Reynolds party over at the socos, so that should be a lot of fun! A victory would make it all the more sweet enjoyable. :-)