Diamondbacks 6, Padres 1: Puttin' On the Ritz

The D-backs dished out some offense this evening and graced fans with the gift of free tacos for only the second time this month. Coincidentally, the last time we had the pleasure of free food was on May 7th at San Diego with Dan Hudson picking up a 6-0 victory. In other news, we move out of last place in the division, improve our record when not hitting a home run to 3-13, and Dan Hudson now officially owns the Padres. Details after the jump...

The Padres jumped on Hudson in the first inning to score a quick run. Chris Denorfia smacked a triple on the first pitch of the game and Jason Bartlett followed by hitting a deep, and nearly unreachable, sacrifice fly to score the first run of the game within the first three minutes. Dan Hudson and the D-backs then buckled down to record the next 26 outs without allowing another run to score. Save for the annoying trio of Denorfia, Eric Patterson, and Brad Hawpe, and the Padres really had nothing for Hudson.

It didn't take long for the Diamondbacks to rally back as they quickly tied the game in the bottom of the frame. Compliments going to some fundamental baseball, we managed to score via a Kelly Johnson double - a Ryan Roberts sacrifice -and a Justin Upton RBI groundout. Fun-duh-ment-uls. Although some of us may debate whether or not Roberts should be bunting in that situation, the result is clear as day.

Some interesting things happened to start off the second inning. Eric Patterson pulled a Denorfia and hit a leadoff triple. Rob Johnson then hit a line drive directly to Justin Upton who nearly threw out a sliding Patterson at home. The D-backs appealed, though, and Joe West called him out, erasing the lead for the Padres. Ah, Joe West... Anyway, it killed the momentum for San Diego and the Diamondbacks took advantage of it.

Miguel Montero helped plate the go-ahead (and winning) run in the fourth inning as back-to-back doubles from he and Upton took care of business. Arizona would score four more runs thanks to a bases loaded single from Gerardo Parra and some more timely hitting from Montero and Drew with RISP in the later part of the 7th inning. In the end, we tallied 6 runs off of 11 hits all while knocking four extra-base hits.

Meanwhile, Dan Hudson cleaned up inning after inning, ensuring a victory for Arizona. Despite allowing four extra base hits in the game, (as I mentioned earlier of the pesky trio) Hudson cleaned up each frame without too much trouble. He pitched effectively and has now allowed only two earned runs in 21.2 innings pitched against the Padres. That's a 0.94 ERA. He left the game with a line of 7 IP/ 8 hits/ 1 ER/ 2 BB/ and 6 strike outs. Aaron Heilman and Sam Demel cleaned up the last two innings only allowing a hit between them to help drop the bullpen ERA to 2.75, fifth best in the league. Shocking stuff.

So the series is split after two games and... wait, that's it? Two game series are boring. Who's idea was that anyway? Well, onto a very pleasant fangraph and some other goodies.

[Click to enlarge, at fangraphs.com]

Our Savior : Dan Hudson, 32.9%
Mini Saviors.: Miguel Montero, 18.0%, Gerardo Parra, 10.6%
The baseball equivalent of [insert bad thing]: Stephen Drew, -7.7%

A normal weekday GDT with a little over 500 comments between a team of 23 players.

Comment of the night goes to Jim only because of his riveting motivational picture...

Ah, more a LOLdog person, I guess.

"I'm confused."
"Yeah, well. It's a big club. We should get t-shirts."

by Jim McLennan on May 17, 2011 7:06 PM MST up reply actions  

Tune in tomorrow as the D-backs roll into another two-game series against the Atlanta Braves. Julio Teheran (0-1, 5.79 ERA) faces off against Joe Saunders (0-5, 5.48 ERA). Teheran was the #5 rated prospect coming into this season by Baseball America and he'll be making his second start in his big league career. Saunders actually has an ERA under five in his last two starts (4.82) so he'll be trying to keep the streak going - as unimpressive as it is...