Dodgers 3, Diamondbacks 1: Arizona Fails to Keep Wolf At Bay

by snakecharmer on Apr 12, 2009 11:57 PM EDT in Diamondbacks Game Reports

Record: 2-4. Pace: 54-108. Change on last season: -2

Last season, the Diamondbacks went 8-10 against the Dodgers, and winning only 3 of 10 in the final three series last year was what doomed the Arizona's post-season chances. Arizona ends the opening week of the 2009 season against the Dodgers, and unfortunately, if this series against them is any indication, the DBacks have a _lot_ of work to do! After winning 9-4 in Game 1 on Friday and losing 11-2 in Game 2 on Saturday, the rubber match today seemed like a good matchup - new staff ace (see below) Dan Haren against the Dodgers' #2 man Randy Wolf.

Wolf struggled against San Diego last week (6 innings, 4 runs), but he quite simply dominated the Diamondbacks up and down the lineup. The Diamondbacks scored their first run on some small ball in the 1st inning - Felipe Lopez doubled, Chris Young sacrificed him to third, and Stephen Drew drove him in with a sac fly to the weakest L.A. outfielder, Juan Pierre. Lopez's double would be the only hit the DBacks would get until the 8th inning.

It was Wolf who drove in the Dodgers' first run, on a play that caused a lot of confusion in the gameday thread and the broadcast booth. (In fact, Yahoo's play-by-play doesn't even recognize how the run scored.) Haren was in trouble after walking Ethier to lead off the 2nd inning and Pierre singled to right and stole second base. Haren caught Wolf's line drive to start a 1-4 double play - but Lopez took his time tagging out Juan Pierre rather than simply stepping on second base. That extra time allowed Ethier to score from third. But wait, you're saying, Ethier didn't tag up after Haren caught the line drive, the run doesn't count!! That's true - if the Diamondbacks had appealed the play in time. It is up to the defense, not the umpires, to make sure the runners leave on time. According to Rule 7.10:

Any runner shall be called out, on appeal, when —
(a) After a fly ball is caught, he fails to retouch his original base before he or his original base is tagged;
....
Any appeal under this rule must be made before the next pitch, or any play or attempted play. If the violation occurs during a play which ends a half-inning, the appeal must be made before the defensive team leaves the field.
...
For the purpose of this rule, the defensive team has "left the field" when the pitcher and all infielders have left fair territory on their way to the bench or clubhouse.

(Emphasis mine.) It was Torre's bench coach, Bob Schaefer, who recognized the so-called "fourth out play" and Arizona didn't realize the mistake until everyone had headed to the bench. Personally, I don't blame Melvin for not realizing the obscure, crazy situation. I choose to blame Lopez who took his sweet time to personally tag out Juan Pierre, stepping over second base in the process! Had he instead stepped on the base, Ethier would not have scored before the third out of the inning was made. Dan Haren was understandably upset, but the correct call was made.

Haren was good today, but not great. He gave up another run in the 3rd, and he had thrown over 60 pitches before getting out of the inning. He was fairly economical the rest of the way, ending up with 100 pitches to end the 6th. Haren gave up four hits and three walks, striking out only two. Meanwhile, Wolf was mowing us down in order, inning after inning. He pitched into the 8th, allowing only two hits, two walks and one run, striking out five. After an intentional walk to Snyder in the 2nd, Wolf retired 19 Diamondbacks in a row until Tracy singled to lead off the 8th. The DBacks threatened in the 8th when Lopez singled with two outs to put two men on, but CY swung at Kuo's first pitch of the at-bat (after a great battle by Lopez before him) to ground out and end the inning. The Dodgers added an insurance run off of Rauch (no surprise there) in the top of the 9th, and the Diamondbacks went quietly on 12 pitches by Mark Grace's favorite "large human," Jonathan Broxton, to end the game.

[Click to enlarge, at Fangraphs.com]

Master of his domain: Dan Haren (pitching), +10.3% (the only player above 10%)

God-emperor of suck: Chris Young, -18.7%

Fairly quiet gameday thread today - only 16 people accounted for 449 comments. Present today were snakecharmer, Jim McLennan, soco, Azreous, kishi, AF DBacks Fanatic, unnamedDBacksfan, hotclaws, mrssoco, ASUJon, NewJackCity, Quin, Wimb, damdrs1717 (who needs to watch his language lest he find himself banned again), Sordid, and victor frankenstein.

As mentioned earlier, Haren is the new staff ace because Webb was placed on the 15-day DL with his sore shoulder. He and Melvin are optimistic that it won't be long since the MRIs are clear. Though it makes sense just to activate Scherzer a day early, Josh Byrnes' comments during the game day indicated they'll pull up a reliever to have in the 'pen.

Audio courtesy of KTAR 620

St. Louis, fresh off a sweep of the Astros, come to town tomorrow, and Davis, Scherzer and Garland are the scheduled starters. The pitching staff needs to be on guard with Albert Pujols and the St. Louis offense, while the Diamondbacks need to get out of their slump and return to playing smart baseball. See ya'll tomorrow.

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It was a beautiful day for baseball. At the game with a friend, we found out seats out in the sunshine, 10 rows behind the home dugout close enough to read the names on the players backs and see the ball as it crossed the plate. Simply amazing and it’s quite staggering how viewing the game on TV or from different parts of the ballpark affects your perception of the game. Lovely.

But the baseball gods never heard my prayer for offense. It took Haren a couple of innings to settle in, but with two-run ball, he gave the Dbacks more than enough to win. But there was no runs. In a couple of cases, it seemed like the Dbacks were unlucky – anytime they put a good hit on the ball, it went right to a fielder. But watching the team foul back to the screen everytime was frustrating,

Is it pitching that causes the ball to fly in that direction or mechanics on the part of the hitter? Because seriously, the number of pitches that went up and straight back behind home plate was staggering, and it was something that happened with nearly every hitter

And Dodger fans chanting “Let’s go Dodgers!” in the stands when their team is up in the ninth are just rude..

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'.

by luckycc on Apr 13, 2009 1:13 AM EDT reply actions

In case you were wondering,

our team really WAS demonstrably unlucky…. it wasn’t just your (and my) opinion. Our BABIP was .136 — pretty ugly. Particularly upsetting was Tracy getting robbed by O-Dawg.

Insert witty and/or humorous signature here.

by DbacksSkins on Apr 13, 2009 4:26 AM EDT up reply actions

.136?

That’s hideous.

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

by kishi on Apr 13, 2009 12:27 PM EDT up reply actions

Dodgers fans cheering

are you serious with that comment???

raygu

by Ray Guilfoyle on Apr 13, 2009 8:50 PM EDT up reply actions

Good recap

I’ve got a question for, well, anyone who knows. How do you get the Win Probability Charts in the story? When I copy and paste them in they are all fuzzy and unreadable. But I can’t upload them in because there is no URL that links just to them (at least that I know of). Any help is greatly appreciated.

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 2:39 AM EDT reply actions

Hmmm.....

well, to start, (evil Dodgers fan) which internet browser are you using?

Insert witty and/or humorous signature here.

by DbacksSkins on Apr 13, 2009 4:27 AM EDT up reply actions

Internet Explorer

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 2:08 PM EDT up reply actions

I go to the live Fangraphs scoreboard

Then RIGHT-click on the image I want. In Firefox, there’s an option ‘Copy Link Location’, which you can use – then just paste the URL in the ‘Upload’ option in the story editor and go from there. In IE 6 [I’ve not gone beyond that!], you would need to right-click on the image, then go to ‘Properties’. You’ll be able to copy and paste the address of the image off there.

"Win, or die" -- Marquise de Merteuil

by Jim McLennan on Apr 13, 2009 12:08 PM EDT up reply actions

Okay

When i tried to import it i got a message “We’re sorry sports fans, but something went wrong. We’ve been notified of the problem and will try to fix it shortly”. Did I do something wrong or does the site just need to be updated momentarily or something?

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 2:19 PM EDT up reply actions

oh man!

you really broke it good!

"If you'd need to know, you'd know. but they decided that you don't need to know,so you don't. So stop thinking about what you don't know because you don't need to know what you think you need to know about!"

by unnamedDBacksfan on Apr 13, 2009 2:59 PM EDT up reply actions

Haha

Messing with the Dodgers fan. How mean.

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 3:05 PM EDT up reply actions

Sounds like you were importing the wrong address

Off yesterday’s scoreboard:
http://www.fangraphs.com/scoreboard.aspx?date=2009-04-12
The address you want to use [found by right-clicking]
http://www.fangraphs.com/tgraphs/20090412_Dodgers_Diamondbacks_0_score.png
That should be easily importable, and works fine for me.

"Win, or die" -- Marquise de Merteuil

by Jim McLennan on Apr 13, 2009 3:27 PM EDT up reply actions

I realized my mistake.

Thanks a lot Jim (and everyone else who chimed in) for all your help. I really do appreciate it.

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 9:34 PM EDT up reply actions

I personally take a screenshot

of our fangraph from the ‘scoreboard’ page and upload it. It also works to right-click and link directly to the image like Jim said. But yes, when you save the big one and try to resize it, it ends up blurry for me too.

by snakecharmer on Apr 13, 2009 4:59 PM EDT up reply actions

Thanks

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 9:59 PM EDT up reply actions

As far as I can tell,

the umps’ bullshit call on the double play was wrong, because they didn’t rule that the run had scored until after the team had already left the field of play. And for the umpire to warn Bob Melvin for being pissed off at that shit was just plain BOSH. Also, oh yeah — shocker of shockers, it certainly looked like this umpiring crew missed ANOTHER call at second base on Juan Pierre’s stolen base. Finally, I don’t know how it looked from the tube, but in the stadium, the fans were getting visibly and audibly angry at the strike zone. Chris Young’s first strikeout was a particularly galling call. It was VERY clear from Haren’s body language that he was pissed off and frustrated at the zone. Larry Vanover, BEWARE: You’re now on DbacksSkins’ shit list.

I know full well that LA has a better lineup, and that our team strikes out a lot, but riddle me this: how the Hell does Dan Haren “somehow” walk 3 and strike out 2 when Randy Freaking Wolf walks 2 and strikes out 5?? Wolf’s SO/BB ratio last year was 2.28 while Haren’s was a nasty 5.15…. I didn’t really see enough of last night’s Petit-Stults game to be able to make a judgment about the K zone in Saturday night’s contest, but I can truly say that I’m not going to shed a tear to see this umpiring crew leave the Copper State as soon as possible.

On the other hand, lustily booing Mandy along with the rest of the stadium was a LOT of fun. His first AB, I yelled out “HEY MANDY! TAKE A SHOWER!” Also, the “BEAT L.A.” franchse-sponsored chant was good times, and was the cheer that the crowd got the most into — it seems as though our fans really DO hate Los Angeles. (As well they should) Honestly, I was hoping for more than just one Beat LA chant.

Went with my dad, sister, aunt and cousin. My aunt Liz didn’t have a Dbacks shirt (it was her first major league game) so she wore one of mine. It was my cousin Cameron’s first major league ballgame too, (he’s 11, and lives in London, but has seen the Bridgeport (CT) Bluefins a few times) so he was super excited! He made an “I LOVE Dbacks” sign at the D’votion table and then held it up after every inning, hoping to get on the JumboTron, but no such luck. Maybe we were on TV? I have no idea. The “Dbacks” part was in cursive, and he was sitting next to me the whole game? He was pretty glad to buy himself a “sweet” Dbacks hat and Dbacks baseball, and he was wearing a Dbacks shirt my mom got him for Easter. He got one of the Dbacks sand toy sets to bring back to England for his little brother Dominic, who’s 2. The two of us were pretty hoarse by the end of the game from all the yelling we did. You should be happy, Jim; seems as though we’ve got one more future Scottish Snakepitter from across the pond. Then again, you would also be disappointed in his choice of TV sports channels— when he wasn’t watching the Dbacks on FSAZ this weekend, he was watching vintage NFL games on this new thing he just discovered called the NFL Network. Ah…. must be his American half coming out. :-D

Anyway, my aunt promised to send him back here to see the MLB All-Star Game in 2011, so… I think he’s addicted.

Insert witty and/or humorous signature here.

by DbacksSkins on Apr 13, 2009 4:03 AM EDT reply actions

I only saw the first couple innings

But I thought Pierre was definitely safe. As for the “fourth out” run, they may have called it late but they did get the right call. I think its hard to complain about that. As for the Wolf/Haren comparison, maybe Wolf just had a good game? Here’s Wolf’s PITCHf/x chart, he only got a few strikes on pitches out of the zone according to the chart, and those could have been swings. Take that with a grain of salt, but I don’t see why the umps would favor the road team.

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 2:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Really, though

If they don’t say the run has scored until the team has left the field, how can the team protest before they leave the field? It’s just not possible.

I followed most of this game on the radio, so I didn’t see it, but the umpiring standards for Friday and Saturday’s games were pretty bad.

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

by kishi on Apr 13, 2009 3:29 PM EDT up reply actions

Hmm

Good point. It was a bit unfair… At least we won by 2! ;-)

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 10:01 PM EDT up reply actions

Indeed.

Can’t be too upset about the ultimate result because it wasn’t the full winning margin.

Insert witty and/or humorous signature here.

by DbacksSkins on Apr 13, 2009 10:03 PM EDT up reply actions

SO.....

how did that Dodgers pitching staff fare this weekend in Arizona??
Wolf pitched a gem……

raygu

by Ray Guilfoyle on Apr 13, 2009 8:49 PM EDT up reply actions

Who's that trip tropping over your bridge?

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

by kishi on Apr 13, 2009 8:54 PM EDT up reply actions

Nice

by Brendan Scolari on Apr 13, 2009 10:00 PM EDT up reply actions

????

what???

raygu

by Ray Guilfoyle on Apr 13, 2009 11:27 PM EDT up reply actions

It's really unfortunate

When people don’t learn the classics.

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

by kishi on Apr 14, 2009 12:13 AM EDT up reply actions

I bow

before the master

by unnamedDBacksfan on Apr 14, 2009 3:17 AM EDT up reply actions

It's like, c'mon....

if you’re gonna come over here and be an idiot troll, at least have a basic grasp of common knowledge.

Insert witty and/or humorous signature here.

by DbacksSkins on Apr 15, 2009 1:58 AM EDT up reply actions

Fo reals

Don’t just bring some weak trolling like you’re a Padres fan.

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

by kishi on Apr 15, 2009 2:12 AM EDT up reply actions

Nice recap, 'charmer

Plenty of info, well prioritized, succinct. You untangled a very confusing circumstance and made an esoteric rule crystal clear….thanks.

If the FO is the focus of anything, something is seriously wrong with the picture ! - unnamedDBacksfan 2/20/09

by Diamondhacks on Apr 13, 2009 5:31 AM EDT reply actions

Thank you!

I appreciate the compliment, I’m glad you liked it… :)

by snakecharmer on Apr 13, 2009 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Nice recap

I love the graphs & contribution percentages, but I’ve realized the one flaw that they have: they can’t measure stupidity. Surely Lopez deserves some on the minus side for not stepping on 2nd.

What’s funny (okay, not that funny) is that had he been turning a double play, it would have been perfectly fine for him to have just stepped somewhere near the base. I love baseball.

by ASUJon on Apr 13, 2009 12:32 PM EDT reply actions