Record: 57-54. Pace: 83-79. Change on last season: -4.

It's official. The Dodgers have suddenly vaulted their way towards the top, and are now located among my three most hated teams. I'm still working on the exact specific position, but if they continue to - and I'm sorry, but there's not really another word for it - fellate Ramirez in the manner seen this afternoon, then the Yankees could end up with a run for their money.

A meaningless home-run this afternoon was apparently deemed worthy of a curtain-call; I don't know who is worse, the fans for demanding it, or Mandy for giving them one. I've seen it attributed to various coaches [Landry, Lombardi, etc.], but the appropriate phrase for Ramirez is, "Act like you've been there before." You didn't win the World Series. You didn't clinch a playoff spot. It was a solo homer, in the fifth inning, and you were already leading. Billy Buckner still qualifies as a rookie pitcher, f'heavens sake. So whoop-de-doo. You're on a second-place team, traded there because you made such a complete ass of yourself, that Boston was willing to pay LA $7m for you to leave. Go out there, put your head down and play.

Give the Dodgers credit though: their offense showed up. Ours - outside of Stephen Drew - didn't. Doug Davis didn't show up either, or at least, not the one who took a perfect game into the seventh inning last time out. He went from the best outing of his time with Arizona, to the worst, being unceremoniously yanked off the mound before completing two innings for the first time ever in his career. Six hits, two walks and five earned runs was the final line, with only 25 strikes in the 47 pitches that he threw, as eight out of thirteen batters faced reached safely.

Initially, it looked like this one was going to be a slugfest. After the Dodgers scored twice in the first, we came back to tie the game on RBI singles by Davis [yep, we were surprised by that too!] and Drew. But Los Angeles scored three more in the bottom of the second, chasing Davis, and Johnson settled down, retiring the next eight Diamondbacks' batters, before Drew homered and Hudson walked, to bring the tying run to the plate. That ended Johnson's day, and the Dodgers bullpen shut out Arizona for the remaining 4.2 innings, with only three singles and a walk to show for our efforts.

The bullpen was forced into mop-up duty, with mixed results. Buckner and Rosales performed admirably, combining for 4.1 innings of one-run ball. However, Qualls and Rauch were less effective: Each allowed three hits in their inning of work, with Qualls allowing one run and Rauch his first two in an Arizona jersey. Pretty much an irrelevance at that stage, though it leaves our relief corps somewhat thin for the upcoming series against the Pirates: I'm hopeful we won't need to use them quite as much in the next couple of days, what with Haren and Webb starting tomorrow and Tuesday.

The only real bright point was Stephen Drew having a three-hit game, including his 13th homer. After Mark Reynolds, our birthday boy, struck out for the third time in a row, as well as having a poor day with the glove, it was decided that a swift alteration of the birthday cake was necessary. The word "Mark" was therefore stricken from the record [or dessert, at least], and ingeniously replaced with the word "Drew." For those who missed the Gameday Thread, this was the result. You may need to squint a bit. :-)

Romero did have two hits, raising an interesting question. When Justin Upton comes back, should we move Romero to center-field and bench Young for a bit? Since returning to the roster on July 5 - basically a month ago - Romero has a line of .295/.318/.429, with seven K's in 63 at-bats. In comparison, over the same time, Chris Young is hitting .211/.269/.368, with 34 strikeouts in 95 at-bats. Romero simply puts together better at-bats, and is capable of fouling off good pitches in the hope of getting a mistake. The Dodgers exposed Young's frailties ruthlessly, and the results this series showed it. Sixteen times he came to the plate: no hits, seven strikeouts and one solitary ball that left the infield.

A particularly weird play in the bottom of the third. With Loney at first, Berroa popped the ball up on the infield. Going up the line, he collided with Tracy who was coming down from first, knocking Chad's glove clean off his hand. He tried to catch the ball bare-handed, but dropped it; then threw to second, where it appeared Loney was signaled out. However, the official ruling was that Berroa was out on batter's interference, and Loney had to return to first. This appears to have been the correct call. According to the Baseball Field Guide, the fielder has the right of way when attempting to make a play on a batted ball, whether the interference is intentional or not, and the ball is dead at that moment, with other runners having to go back to the last base they touched prior to it.

[Click to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Stephen Drew, +17.0%
God-emperor of suck: Doug Davis, -40.4%
Dishonorable mention: Conor Jackson, -10.6%

Big thanks to soco and mrssoco for opening their house to us this afternoon, where Mrs. SnakePit and I were joined by kishi, mrskishi and Azreous. There was a tense moment after the TV decided to commit suicide, lemming-style - the mount falling off the wall, with the whole assembly coming close to crushing mrssoco. Miraculously, it suffered only superficial damage: Vizio TV's are clearly capable of taking a good pounding. But it was a lot of fun, and we're contemplating a repeat for the penultimate game of the season at the end of September, this time at SnakePit Towers.

Apart from the above, present in the online version of the Gameday Thread [that'd be the one without cake and plummeting domestic appliances] were unnamedDBacksfan, hotclaws, Wimb, AF DBacks Fanatic, 4 Corners Fan, hotchixsnake27, luckycc, snakecharmer, foulpole, TwinnerA, Snakebitten, Scrbl, AZWILDCATS, Turambar, britdback, Shums, srdmad, emilylovesthedbacks and AJforAZ.

You can never be too unhappy with a road-trip where you win seven out of ten. However, having gone 7-1 up until yesterday, I think most fans will be somewhat disappointed. Much as we hate to admit it, it's clear that the Dodgers made the move of the season in acquiring Ramirez - not least because, somehow, they're paying him less we are to Tony "4-for-26" Clark. We still possess the lead as we head into the final 51 games, and the next couple of weeks have the schedule definitely easing up: our next five series are all against sub-.500 teams. We face the Dodgers again at the end of the month: will we still be in first then? Fasten your seat-belts, people: it's going to be a bumpy ride...