Chase Anderson and Homer Bailey were either good at pitching today, or the Diamondbacks and Reds were terrible at hitting. In truth, there's probably a bit of a Column A/Column B sort of thing going on.
The offense for Cincinnati came in the 2nd inning when Devin Mesoraco hit a solo home run off of Anderson. They threatened for more, but Ender Inciarte was able to throw out Baryan Pena at the plate, and the best part of it was there was a distinct lack of invocation of the Buster Posey rule, so it stood this time.
For the Diamondbacks? It came in the 4th. Mark Trumbo hit all that hit off of Jay Bruce's glove, but was ruled a double as is the scorer's wont. Mark Trumbo having a double is actually news in itself, which says a lot about his performance since coming off the disabled list. Trumbo scored on a hard-hit single by Miguel Montero to make it 1-1.
I'd be remiss if I didn't make mention of David Peralta's sliding catch that led to a double play in the 4th, which can be seen at this link.
From that point onward, both pitching staffs stepped up/both offenses stepped down. Anderson went 7 Innings, allowed 3 hits (All in that 2nd inning), and struck out a career high 8 batters. He was lifted for a pinch hitter late in the game to try to generate some offense. That did not go quite as planned.
Bailey was also similarly on point, annoyingly, and Aroldis Chapman came into the game in the 9th and threw all kinds of heat.
Six of Chapman's 20 pitches that inning were 103 mph or 104 mph.
— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) July 29, 2014
| And so we go into extras. The most notable thing that happened before the 15th inning was the matchup of Reds reliever Jumbo Diaz against Mark Trumbo, creating the audibly pleasing matchup of Mark vs. Diaz. Everything else was just a slow march to nothingness. For a game that went 15 innings, almost nothing of note actually happened, there was little tension, it was like a weird Art film.
Brad Ziegler, Evan Marshall, Randall Delgado and Oliver Perez all held the line in the bullpen. In the 15th, Martin Prado got on base with a walk. He went to second base on a Didi Gregorius groundout. He scored when Nick Ahmed hit a single to make it 2-1.
Addison Reed came in for the save, and despite a two-out walk was able to shut it down and seal down the win in a long, drawn-out game.
Source: FanGraphs
Awesome!: Anderson (+27.8%), Delgado, Perez (+24.6%)
Meh?: Inciarte: (-20.2%)
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These two teams play tomorrow, and it's Trevor Cahill against Mike Leake, if you're into that sort of thing.