Diamondbacks 4, Braves 6 - Peña inflicts the Pain

Record: 59-56. Pace: 83-79. Change on last season: -5.

Looks like Azreous managed to pack his computer away, or is trapped under a plastic crate somewhere, so I'll lob up a somewhat belated and quick recap of last night's game in place. It's another case where a pitcher we'd never seen before shut us down; seems to have happened a lot this year. A dozen times we've faced a starter making his twelfth or less career appearance, and the overall ERA of these rookies is 4.07. Here are the ones that stand out:

• August 7: Charle Morton, seven shutout innings for Atlanta  (Career game #10)
  
• August 1: Clayton Kershaw, six shutout innings for LA (#11)
  
• April 6: Franklin Morales, six shutout innings for Colorado (#9)
• April 3: Johnny Cueteo, seven innings of one-hit ball for Cincinatti (#1)

Jeff Karstens, who flirted with perfection on Wednesday, doesn't quite make the list, as it was his 17th game. Of course, for every one who has killed us, there's another whom we've killed in turn, such as Herrera, who started Monday's game for Pittsburgh. And we also faced Morales in his tenth game - then promptly whacked him for seven runs in four innings.

Last night was another case of hitting balls hard right at people, and that's why I am less bothered by the recent offensive struggles. Our BABIP over the last three games is just .187, and that is unsustainably low: I was encouraged by the fact that we were hitting the ball hard and putting it in play. Eventually, if you keep doing that, you will start to find the gaps, and the runs will flow thereafter - I'd be a lot more worried if we were striking out and scoring all our runs on homers.

This loss is flat out on Melvin. It was painfully obvious to everyone in the stadium save our manager, that Peña had nothing after he allowed a single, threw two wild pitches to the next batter and ended up walking him. However, Melvin left him in to allow one, two, three, four runs and, effectively, render our comeback an irrelevance. And after Reynolds' homer, way to suck the life out of the rally, by pinch-hitting for Romero with Burke. He might claim the latter has a better OBP, but of his 21 walks, 8 were in order to get to the pitcher - six of them full-on intentional. Those have to be ignored here, when the pitcher is actually trying to retire him. And oh, look: he did.

The Petit Unit wasn't bad: we'll always take five innings of two-run ball from our #5 starter. He allowed another homer, a solo shot, and the opening run largely scored because of a balk when Yusmeiro tried to throw over to first-base, advancing the runner into scoring position, from where he scored on a single and a sacrifice fly. He did allow a double to the pitcher, leading off the third, Morton's first-ever hit - but he was immediately thrown out, having wandered too far off second. I don't think he'd ever been there before. Petit struck out six, and extended our streak of walkless starts to four. If Davis can avoid any free passes tonight, that'll be a complete circuit of our rotation, without a base on balls.

Hudson and Jackson had two hits each: the latter including a beautiful, swinging bunt that was perfectly placed down the third-base line; Hudson was robbed off another hit by a beautiful diving-play from Infante at third, on a scorcher. Reynolds reached twice, on our only walk, and of course, had a three-run homer in the eighth; that was his 24th homer, and gives him 76 RBI on the year. But have to say, I loved the Braves' closer, Mike Gonzalez: he sways on the mound while getting signs from the catcher, the amplitude getting bigger before he eventually goes into his wind-up. It's quite hypnotic, like a snake-charmer - appropriate enough, given he retired all four Diamondbacks he faced...

Game Notes

• We take credit for Reynolds' homer, having eaten at Fatburger before the game, specifically for this purpose.
• Out in the walkway behind the batters' eye in center-field, they have a list of all the people and corporations who have been season-ticket holders since the franchise started.
• No more enthusiastic waving of your Fry's card. They now have some crap contest where someone has to recall, say, the fourth item bought by Baxter on a trip to the supermarket.
• Special K truly lived up to his name, with two horrible, inning-ending K's on balls out of the zone, before redeeming himself with a three-run, opposite field homer. He was clearly peeved by the strikeouts, tossing his helmet angrily away after the event.
  
• The crowd really got into the game there, cheering loudly - without prompting by the Jumbotron or the Rallybacks. The latter were observed staring blankly, confused by this unapproved enthusiasm.
• Juan Cruz looked very good, striking out the side in the ninth on 13 pitches. The crowd got into that too: just a shame he hadn't been brought in for the eighth...

[Click to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Conor Jackson. -10.1%
God-emperor of suck: Chad Tracy, -22.5%
Dishonorable mentions: Pena, -13.0%; Young, -12.6%

An interesting graph. You might think - and going by the energy of the crowd, you'd be right - that Mark Reynolds' three-run homer would have made him master of his domain. However, as the Braves were already ahead 6-0, with two out in the eighth, that only improved our Win Probability from 1.9% to 9.5%. His previous rally-killing endeavors meant that overall, he was a -1.1%. Similarly, you might think Peña was worthy of God-emperor status, but by the time he entered the game, our WP was already down to 13.9%. He took care of the remainder, with admirable efficiency. :-(

The Gameday Thread almost merited overflow status, and probably would have done if we'd clawed back those two remaining runs. soco just out-posted 'Skins, 117-116; also present were kishi, Scrbl, TwinnerA, snakecharmer, AF DBacks Fanatic, hotclaws, Zephon, Ridster09, 4 Corners Fan, SongBird, srdmad, AZWILDCATS [there's a surprise...], Muu, utahdbacksfan, ZonaBacks10, foulpole, LucaMaz3, Shums, and emilylovesthedbacks.