|
|
Diamondbacks Lineup
- Didi Gregorius - SS
- Gerardo Parra - RF
- Paul Goldschmidt - 1B
- Miguel Montero - C
- Aaron Hill - 2B
- Martin Prado - 3B
- David Peralta - CF
- Cody Ross - LF
- Bronson Arroyo - P
I pretty much took the day off from baseball yesterday, instead hanging out at the Mad Monster Party in the Sheraton downtown, with the likes of Elvira, Sid Haig, Kane Hodder and John Schneider (and if you don't know who those are, this is me shaking my head sadly). I think it's kinda refreshing and necessary to do so: just as for the players, it's a long season and, particularly when things aren't going well, it can become a succession on unpleasant grinding noises. To be honest, you could argue that the "Check engine" light for this season went on about halfway through the second game in Australia, and is now more or less our main source of illumination.
The cause of the problems this series is our old nemesis: bad pitching. On Friday, it was the bullpen's inability to post zeroes in the seventh and eighth inning that cost us the game; on Saturday, Josh Collmenter's apparent ignorance of Dan Haren's founder membership in #PitchersWhoRake. I mean, Haren has a .209 career average. That's higher than J.P. Arencibia; Haren's .540 OPS is 39 points higher than Tuffy Gosewisch. There's only three active pitchers with 300+ PAs and a better career line [Adam Wainwright, Dontrelle Willis and Yovani Gallardo]. So an intentional walk to reach Haren backfiring, thanks to a serving of meatball? This is my unsurprised face.
Avoiding basic errors like this will certainly help the Diamondbacks avoid being swept by the Dodgers for the third time already this season. On the plus side, whatever happens, we'll be pretty much done with Los Angeles, and can spent almost the rest of the year ignoring them: after facing the Dodgers 13 times in our first 72 games, there are only five contests against them in the remaining 90. But I'd rather not have to wade through the Twitter sewer of braying Dodgers fans, gloating about a sweep, to find my Tweets of the Game. There are World Cup games I could be watching this afternoon. Don't make me do it, Diamondbacks.