FanPost

Diamondbacks 5, White Sox 1: A Good Time For Everyone Except Maybe Mom.

David Banks

Record: 15-25. Pace: 61-101. Change on 2013/2010/2004: -7/-1/-1

The Diamondbacks celebrated Mother's Day by forcing Chase Anderson's mom to sit through the tremendously stressful, heart-rending experience of watching her sweet baby make his major league debut against a pretty tough White Sox lineup. But guess what! It worked out okay! He was pretty great and he got the win! The White Sox helped us out with some hilarious pratfalls, and the Diamonbacks won their third series in a row, beating Chicago 5 to 1.

It seemed like pretty much everyone had a great time at this game, with the possible exception of Chase Anderson's mother, which we will talk about more later. Even the White Sox, who had a little trouble getting runs on the board, made the most of the afternoon by committing some lively and humorous errors. In the first inning the center fielder, Alejandro De Aza (how fun is that to say!) did some sort of comical outfield frolic in lieu of catching a hit off the bat of Parra, leading to our first run. Shortly thereafter, Jose Abreu treated us all to some comedic stylings of his own by trying to stretch a single into a double despite having the ankles of a fussy ninety year old socialite. Oh White Sox, you scamps! Always joking about!

Speaking of joking, is the broadcast team always this delightful? They obviously find each other highly entertaining, and I for one am on board. They had a couple of ongoing jokes about how hysterical it is that the White Sox scored seven runs against pitcher Hector Noesi when he was with Texas, and then immediately claimed him on waivers when he got released. Again, those White Sox, such jokesters! Brenly told some great stories about how miserable it is to coach an All Star Game. "Paul Lo Duca HATES ME." And there was great mirth to be found in the upcoming Sale Bobblehead Night signs, which refer to White Sox player Chris Sale. "A Sale on Bobbleheads! Tremendous!" Ohhhh, they have fun.

But the real story of this game was our new teeny baby pitcher Chase Anderson, just up from Double-A Mobile. He was visibly nervous before the game, and at one point he was inexplicably doing pullups on the top of the dugout, but for the most part he looked terrific out there. Chase pitched five and a third innings with six strikeouts. He gave up one run, a solo homer to Sierra. The one red flag about this outing is that he had a tough time shaking that off. A few more major league starts will likely settle his nerves a bit, we all hope! It's of course very possible that he is benefitting from the fact that none of the White Sox hitters have ever seen his stuff before, but I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this little fellow, who incidentally reminds me of a young Bruce McCulloch.

Gerardo Parra was the offensive hero of the day, hitting the aforementioned leadoff triple in the first as well as a two run homer in the fifth. Miggy gave us some insurance in the ninth with a pretty lovely two run shot. Other than that, the offense looked a little too cool for school. Goldy struggled at the plate once again, and Cody Ross looks like he's still not completely back to his old self. We got ten hits but it felt like we should have beat up on Noesi a little more. Luckily our young pitchers more than made up for any offensive woes- in addition to Chase, our other adorable new pitcher Evan Marshall got a couple of strikeouts as well, and the bullpen pulled it out as Paul Konerko hit into a double play to end the game. ("Awwwwww, sad.")

So as I mentioned earlier, Chase Anderson's mother was at the game, and everyone was acting like this is just such a wonderful thing for her, to get to see her kid pitch in his major league debut on Mother's Day. But are they sure? Did anyone actually ask her? Because I'm going to be honest with you, I have two sons, and to me, something like this sounds like a horrifying nightmare of stress and teeth grinding and probably tears. But maybe that's just me. Or maybe she had other things she would have liked to do today, like she had brunch plans and a book she really wanted to just sit down with for a few hours, but instead she finds herself sitting outside in Chicago for three hours and having to act like it's all totally terrific? "This is supposed to be MY day," she's thinking to herself, "and instead I have to sit her with a fake smile pasted on my face while everybody goes on and on about Chase, as usual. Chase this and Chase that. UGH, like I haven't had to sit through millions of hours of baseball in my time as a mother, could I not just have one flippin' mimosa for myself??" Of course, again, I could be wrong on this.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you that are mothers- I personally know at least two Pit Dwellers that are mothers, and one of them is My Own Actual Mother! I've been a mom for close to a decade now, which means I have had lots of time to perfect my Not Mad, Just Disappointed eyes. Luckily for all the Dbacks, none of them will be receiving that look from their own mothers today. Our record improves to 15-25 with this win, and it wraps up a very successful road trip.

It was a lively Game Day thread. Personally my favorite comment came from Clefo after Chase Anderson was pulled...

Looks like he was

/sunglasses

Chased from the game

/YAAAAAAAAAAH

though I get the sense that maybe not everyone found that as droll as I did. Overall, it was a fun game to watch and a great way to close out the series. Now go call your Mom!

Bells and whistles

20140511_diamondbacks_whitesox_0_20140511174824_live_medium
[Click to enlarge, at Fangraphs.com]
Mother of Dragons: Gerardo Parra, +23.3%
Mother Teresa: Anderson. +17.0%; Parra, +13.5%
Mother of Tears: Aaron Hill, -19.5%

Almost 400 comments in the GDT, a particularly good showing considering the day! DbacksSkins led the way, ahead of JoeCB1991 and guest recapper MarinerHousewife. Also to be seen: 4 Corners Fan, AzRattler, Clefo, DbacksSkins, Diamondhacks, GODSCHMIDT, GuruB, Jim McLennan, MrMrrbi, PR151, RobbieFVK, SenSurround, TolkienBard, cheese1213, ford.williams.10, hotclaws, onedotfive, preston.salisbury, rd33 and rfffr. Comment of the day was awarded above!

And it's back to Chase for Chase and the other 24 guys. :) We start a three-game series against the Nationals tomorrow night in Phoenix, with Josh Collmenter going up against Jordan Zimmermann.