That was quite a spectacular storm last night. Around 9:40, Mrs.SnakePit called me to the back yard to see the lightning show. Never seen anything like that in my life: a storm usually has gaps of several between the flashes. Not the one last night, which looked more like a disco inferno, even though it was at such a distance that you couldn't hear thunder from it. The overall effect was such, that I was beginning to think it wasn't actually natural: either a sub-station had blown up in Oldtown Scottsdale, or we had been invaded by Martians.

I was kinda hoping for the latter, but the TV informed me otherwise, reporting that the storm cell was towering above the city, reaching a height of 55,000 feet. That can't have been any fun for someone trying to land at Sky Harbor [perhaps including the Dodgers, he added hopefully?]. So we bunkered down and waited for it to hammer us. Around 11:30 pm, it did, a ferocious combination of rain, wind and hail hammering the house. Our poor dogs were terrified, and the noise sounded like Keith Moon was doing a drum solo on our roof. It dumped six-tenths of an inch of rain in our neighborhood in about thirtty minutes, before going on - that was small beer compared to some places, such as Van Buren and 40th street, which got 1.89 inches overnight.

As a result, the journey to work this morning was rough. Traffic lights were downed - not knocked out, but physically downed - on 40th street, and our access to the highway was blocked both on Cactus and Tatum. Mrs. SnakePit attempted to go around the damage, but that only made things worse, as everywhere we turned seemed to lead to further diversions, and the usual 25-minute trip stretched out to longer than an hour. On Seventh Street, we saw a whole series of phone lines which had toppled, and we also saw a billboard which had been torn entirely off its roof-top mounting. Word is, the Chase building downtown has also lost most of the windows on its lower floor too, and a lot of people are still without power.

Nice way to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers to town for what promised to be a crucial three-game series. Both teams have been slumping of late, and are a combined 1-for-13 in the past week. It looks like the power outage mentioned has also been affecting the bats of both teams:
    Arizona: .222/.294/.340 = OPS .634, 3.5 runs per game
    Los Angeles: .244/.314/.358 = OPS .672, 1.7 runs per game
Yes, you read that right. During their current losing streak, the Dodgers have scored more than two runs just once. And you though our offense was scuffling.

Los Angeles, now trailing by 3.5 games, really need to win the series because, coming in, CoolStandings.com currently gives the Diamondbacks a 75.0% chance of winning the division - our best figure since June 1 - while yesterday's loss dropped the Dodgers down to only 19.6% [The Rockies aren't quite out of it yet, at 4.9%, with the Giants picking up the balance] Even though we only won one game since the start of the Florida series, we still managed to add 1.5 games to our lead, and time is not on the side of those trying to catch up.

The Dodgers have 28 games left: if Arizona plays to their record and goes 15-14 in our remaining games, Los Angeles would need to have an 18-10 record to tie us. But if we take two of three here, we'll be 4.5 up on them: should we win half our remaining games [leaving us again at 83 wins], then Los Angeles would then need to go 17-8 down the stretch to match Arizona. With Webb and Haren going in two of these games, we should feel fairly optimistic - but Webb and Haren didn't exactly help us much in San Diego [though the latter hardly deserves blame for his performance]. Let's take a look at the match-ups for the series:

Friday: Hiroki Kuroda, RHP (7-9, 3.87)  vs Doug Davis, LHP (5-8, 4.63)
Some discussion whether we should go with Davis or Petit after the day off, but the experience of Davis was seen as outweighing the better recent performances of the Petit Unit. Kuroda has made three starts against Arizona and they appear to have been directed by Sergio Leone, as we've had The Good [one run in 7.1 innings], The Bad [four in 5.2] and The Ugly [six in two]. Overall, that's a 4.80 ERA in 15 innings, on a healthy 21 hits. Davis has bounced back after a shaky month, with quality starts in his last two outings, but has allowed 11 earned runs in only 10.2 innings against Los Angeles. Edge: Los Angeles

Saturday: Chad Billingsley, RHP (12-10, 3.15)  vs. Dan Haren, RHP (14-6, 3.10)
Billingsley has been perhaps the most reliable of the Dodgers starters, and hasn't allowed more than three runs in a game over eight appearances since the All-Star break. However, he is 0-3 against the Diamondbacks this season, with a 7.71 ERA: control has been his main problem, allowing eight walks in only fourteen innings. Haren has not enjoyed pitching at Chase lately, with Pittsburgh, Atlanta and San Diego combining for 15 runs in 17.1 innings. But he faced the Dodgers here just after the All-Star break, threw seven shutout innings, and has a 3.06 ERA in three starts against them. Edge: Arizona

Sunday: Derek Lowe, RHP (10-11, 3.81)  vs. Brandon Webb, RHP (19-5, 2.96)
The two sinkerballers face off again, and if that sounds familiar it's because this is the third such encounter since the All-Star break. The first was July 20, when neither pitcher featured in the decision, thanks to Brandon Lyon's memorable five-run meltdown in the ninth, which gave victory to LA. Webb and Lowe faced off again on the 31st - this time Webb came out on top, throwing eight innings of one-run ball and Lyon locked down a 2-1 win for Arizona. Webb hasn't lost in nine starts against Los Angeles since 2004, with only Lyon's blow-up stopping him from being perfect over that time: instead, he's "just" 8-0 with a 1.19 ERA. Edge: Arizona

Overall victory therefore appears eminently achievable, but I'd be a lot happier if the offense were to wake up out of their slump. Home has been good to Arizona so far - they bat .270 at Chase compared to .234 elsewhere and we score 5.1 runs per game here, a run better than on the road. It's not going to be easy, but I do think the Diamondbacks will get back on track, take two out of three and while not putthing them away, will leave the Dodgers' season in a very precarious position.

Record; 57-53. Pace: 84-78. Change on last season: -3.

I guess it was inevitable, but I'd rather Ramirez had waited until we left town to hit his first home-run, simply so we wouldn't have to see the pants-wetting reaction at Dodger Stadium. Judging by that, it would appear LA fans had never seen a home-run before. Mind you, given their non-Manny leader in that category has a bare dozen, and LA are dead last in the league overall, I guess they are something of a rare event. The Dodgers were also the beneficiaries of an umpiring error - Juan Pierre's bunt rolled foul but was called fair by the home-plate umpire, Darryl Cousins. That led to Ramirez coming up with a man on and an additional run for Los Angeles.

Yeah: paging Bitter, party of one. Two long balls and the continued ineffectiveness of the offense, held to two runs for the third straight game, were what ended our four-game winning streak. Can't win 'em all, that's true: but the offensive faucet has been cut off at the source in this series, with a combined line in the past three games of just 200/.223/.330. When you face someone like Kuroda, who came in with an ERA of 9.82 over his last four starts, you certainly expect to be able to do better than four hits and one run over 7.1 innings.

However, that is all we managed: the lone run came on Montero's first long-ball of the year, and we only had one other man reach scoring position against him, until the last batter Kuroda faced, with one out in the eighth inning. That brought the tying run to the plate, and it also reached there in the ninth inning; we couldn't do anything with this late flurry of offensive activity, and took our foot off the Dodgers' neck, spurning a golden - or, at least, gold-plated - opportunity to send them four games back. We've been able to do nothing against the Dodgers' starters at all this series:
    LA starters: 19.1 IP, 15 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 11 K, 1.40 ERA
Admittedly, not that they've done much better against ours:
    AZ starters: 19 IP, 16 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 13 K, 1.89 ERA

The Petit Unit took the loss, because of the home-runs to Ramirez and Blake, though you'll generally be happy to take three runs over five innings from your #5 starter. [That's a higher Game Score than Micah has averaged over his last 14 starts since April 26] He'd only thrown 58 pitches, so I was somewhat surprised to see him pinch-hit for in the sixth, but I guess the aim was to try and kick-start the offense. It didn't work, Ojeda grounding out, and the replacement pitcher, Rosales, allowed three hits and a run in the sixth, ending our bullpen's scoreless streak.

Good to see Juan Cruz back [Peguero was sent back down, despite not having appeared in a game - so if you didn't notice his presence, that's fine!], though his first batter faced was somewhat shaky, taking ten pitches to walk Kuroda. After that, he settled down, though did allow a bloop single to Martin, which brought you-know-who to the plate with two men aboard. Cruz finished the inning off by striking Ramirez out - which is exactly the same way all of the previous four encounters between the two ended. As Grace and Sutton pointed out, we might well be seeing this encounter a few more times before the end of the season. Peña finished off with a scoreless eighth.

We were held to only five hits and a walk, our lowest figure since getting shut out 2-0 by the Cubs on July 21. Jackson was the only player to reach safely more than once, with a hit and a walk. Chris Young was 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts, leaving him 0-for-12 with five K's in this series. He looks increasingly to be suffering from a case of Quentinitis, the main symptom of which is swinging wildly at sliders down and away, out of the strikezone. While not incurable - Quentin seems to have recovered nicely, damnhimtohell - while Young is infected, it will remain a major hole, that opposing pitchers can easily exploit.

[Click to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Miguel Montero, +9.6%
God-emperor of suck: Chad Tracy, -12.8%

A solid Gameday Thread, though unfortunately, we have to implement a new rule due to abuse: non-mods [basically, anyone whose name is not listed at the bottom of the site] are limited to one picture per thread, and any subsequent ones will be deleted. This is because the posting of the same, large picture on multiple occasions brings everything to a grinding halt - and, personally, I find it tiresome, like seeing the word "Sweet!" every single time a Diamondbacks player gets a hit. Present were: DbacksSkins, AF DBacks Fanatic, soco, Azreous, kishi, Wimb, hotclaws, snakecharmer, utahdbacksfan, DiamondbacksWIn, foulpole, TwinnerA, Scrbl, luckycc, unnamedDBacksfan, garyho and 4 Corners Fan.

Coming into the series, I would have been happy to settle for a spliy, but after the first two wins, I now feel greedy, and if we "only" get those two victories, I'll feel that this was a lost opportunity. Davis takes the mound today, and it is, of course, the Mark Reynolds party over at the socos, so that should be a lot of fun! A victory would make it all the more sweet enjoyable. :-)