Record: 23-15. Pace 98-64. Change on last season: +3

Maybe I should just run out yesterday's report again, and see if anyone notices the difference. Because, as there, a sterling effort from a starting pitcher is wasted by a dismal bullpen performance, who cough up the Diamondbacks' lead and allow the Cubs to walk away with a win in the late innings. This time, the unlucky loser for Arizona was Edgar Gonzalez: he was a late replacement for Randy Johnson, whom the D-backs opted not to start on a cold (48 degrees), windy (24 mph!) day in Chicago. Said manager Bob Melvin:

I think it's pretty obvious. With a guy that's had the problems he's had with his back, to send him out there in those conditions, not only with what certainly would be a wet field, but windy conditions which play on the back. There are a lot of reasons not to pitch him today.

Can't really argue with that, though Johnson seemed fairly unimpressed: "It was Bob Melvin's decision," he said. "What are you going to do? I was prepared to pitch, but with so much uncertainty, I think that's why... I'm not going to make a big deal about it. I'm not pitching, I'm going to go out and play some catch because I don't want to go this long without playing catch." There's an off-day tomorrow, so the plan is to push everyone back: Johnson will start on Tuesday at Chase Field against the Rockies, and will be followed in that series by Owings and Webb.

And, as we've seen a number of times before, when called upon to be a spot starter, Edgar Gonzalez delivered, even despite an hour-long rain-delay before the first pitch. He gave us five innings, allowing two runs on five hits and two walks, and it's a bit surprising that he was pulled for a pinch-hitter in the sixth, as Gonzalez had only thrown 87 pitches [He hadn't taken the mound since relieving Max Scherzer on May 5th, so was not on short rest, or anything like that]. I imagine Melvin had no problems about using his bullpen with a day off, though the events of yesterday forced him to diverge from the usual pattern.

And that's where thing got nasty. Cruz was perfectly fine in the sixth, but got into trouble in the seventh. After fanning the first hitter, he walked the next one, and then allowing Reed Johnson to hit his first homer of the season, Cruz supplying enough power to counter the strong wind blowing in at Wrigley. Combined with his outing yesterday, Cruz presents us with the following line against the Cubs this series:
    Juan Cruz: 2.1 IP, 3 H, 5 BB, 6 K, 2 HR, 3 ER
Like I said, there's rarely a dull moment when Famine takes the mound: he is a real "three true outcomes" pitcher. Of the 15 batters he faced this series, 13 walked, homered or struck out.

Tony Peña rescued him, and got the final two outs to keep the game tied at the end of the seventh. However, the eighth proved just as unpleasant, the Cubs scoring twice on a double to the wall in center-field, after an intentional walk had been issued to Soriano to load the bases. [Today was not a good one for the intentional walk: both teams used it, and it turned round and bit them in both cases] Our defense cost us in that inning too, as a half-decent throw from Montero would have nailed Ramirez as he stole second; instead, it sailed off-line, and Fukudome followed with a perfect bunt.

Again, the offense was quiet, with only five hits and AZ were 1-for-5 with runners in scoring position. The team had a great chance to bust the game open in the fifth, but couldn't take advantage. Bases-loaded walks to Jackson and Upton, after an RBI single by Ojeda tied the game, had given the Diamondbacks a two-run lead, and they still had the bases full with only one down. However, Drew popped out to the shortstop and Reynolds flied out - the failure to add on runs there proved costly down the stretch, especially as the Chicago bullpen faced the minimum 14 hitters over the last 4 2/3 innings, thanks to Burke getting picked off and Ojeda grounding into a double-play.

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Master of his domain: Conor Jackson, +18.2%
God-Emperor of suck: Juan Cruz, -29.0%

Slightly better Gameday Thread attendance today, though we were still well short of overflow level. Present were: TwinnerA, foulpole, hotclaws, unnamedDBacksfan, kishi, csktech, peachy rex, luckycc, seton hall snake pit, 4 Corners Fan, snakecharmer, IndyDBack, srdmad, OnlineHomeopath [welcome!], dahlian, Wimb, DbacksSkins, RAMJB, likeavirgin and TexSkins. Certainly a disappointing loss; I was hoping for better, especially once I heard we wouldn't be facing Zambrano. If our bullpen had held up, we could have come away from Chicago with two victories: it's therefore infuriating to get nothing at all.

On the plus side, getting swept by the Cubs is probably not as bad as getting swept by the Astros - and that's what happened to the Dodgers over the weekend, so our lead in the division stayed rock-solid, at 3.5 games. Makes me feel a lot better about taking two of three at home from the Astros. But thus far, the NL West is back to being the NL Worst, having a cumulative record of 16-20 against the East and 20-31 against the Central. [For completion, the Central is 28-32 facing the East]

Ours was not the only bullpen to suffer, LA's Jonathan Broxton coughing up six runs in 1/3 of an inning this afternoon. This not only got the loss, it also took Shawn Chacon off the hook, and gave him his eighth consecutive no-decision. It's not as if he has been pulled that early, throwing 51 innings in those eight starts, but he's just never been involved in the outcome. You have to go back to 1977 to find a longer streak of no-decisions; John D'Acquisto and Randy Lerch each went ten straight starts that season, though the former was a spot starter who only twice pitched past the third. Chacon's streak is more remarkable, in that having reached five innings every time, he would have qualified for the win.

Off-day tomorrow, as noted already. Glad it comes on a Monday, as I am usually scurrying around like a mad fool then anyway! Good to regroup and get ready to face the Rockies once more - I think we'll be happy to get back to taking our our divisional rivals after the last few games!

Record: 22-13. Pace: 102-60. Change on last season: +3

Your attention please. During the early stages of today's Gameday Thread, a picture was posted which contained a small typographical error. A corrected version of this photograph follows below.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

The quote that form today's title is courtesy of Dahlian in the Gameday Thread, and eloquently captures the frustrating nature of today's defeat. Either that, or a cat wandered across his keyboard. I can cope with Byrnes' relentless recent streak of suck: he's now 5-for-50 in the past dozen games, with no walks or extra-base hits and 12 K's. But today, his flamboyant flailing at strikes finally caught up with him in the eighth inning, and set a new nadir. The victim was Augie Ojeda, who'd singled to lead off [in a one-run game, mind], but was called out as he stole second, on catcher interference by Byrnes. Eric's violent afterswing was judged to have blocked the Cubs' catcher's attempt to nail Ojeda, wiping the tying run off base. Yes, Byrnes is the only player we have who can strike out into a double-play... :-(

And it started so well too, with Chris Young homering in the first inning, which must have brought back memories to the Cubs faithful, since he did exactly the same thing in the same stadium, the last time these two teams met, in what turned out to be the finale of the 2007 NLDS. We sat back, and waited for the offense to kick the door in against the shaky Lilly.

And we waited.

And we waited.

But nothing showed up. We had two-out hits. We had runners in scoring position. We just never quite managed to combine the two, and get hits on the rare occasions we had runners in scoring position. Our best chance was probably the fourth, where Jackson walked, then stole second [as pointed out in the Gameday Thread, he is 3-0 in stolen bases this year, better than a certain someone's 4-2...] with no outs. However, Upton, Reynolds and Snyder all went down swinging. Conversely, the Cubs did their damage the hard way. After Haren had fanned the first two hitters in the fifth, DeRosa doubled, and Johnson was intentionally walked to get to the pitcher...who promptly drove in the tying run with a single. An RBI double then gave the Cubs the lead, and inevitably led to some second-guessing of Melvin, especially since Haren had retired 15 of 17 hitters when the walk was called for.

Said Melvin, "You've got to. In a 1-0 game like that, you have to. Johnson's hitting [.346] with runners in scoring position and if Johnson gets a hit there, I feel worse than I do. You've got to make the pitcher beat you in that situation." This is where I point out a) the evidence for clutch hitting is scant at best, b) and becomes basically non-existent, when your sample-size is 26 at-bats. Yes, that .346 figure is based upon exactly nine hits for Johnson with RISP this year. S'funny: 26 at-bats are sufficient to get a guy an intentional walk, but almost twice as many are apparently not enought evidence to merit moving a certain someone down the order. This is one aspect of Melvin's managerial style that drives me nuts: the abuse of stats, such as batter vs. hitter match-ups, to decide lineups and tactics. In this case, it bit him in the ass.

Good outing by Haren; if only he could have got the last out in the fifth. Up until that point, his stuff was nasty and causing a lot of problems for the Cubs hitters. He pitched seven innings, allowing just those two fifth-inning runs, on a total of five hits, two walks and five strikeouts. The Tribune reports that Haren actually lost 10 pounds in weight, after he went down with an upper respiratory infection earlier this season - that'd be the one providing all those "flu-like symptoms." And, quite probably, the same one currently treating my upper respiratory system as some kind of biological theme-park. "I felt great. I’m finally getting back to normal,"  he said after the game. Encouraging to see: I particularly liked the solid groundball-flyball ratio of 11:5 posted by Haren today.

Cruz pitched the eighth and final inning to the Cubs hitters, and performed his one-man version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The good would be the three K's; the bad, the homer allowed to Lee; the ugly, probably the two walks and two hits he gave up, but as the homer was the first of these, he sauntered off with the bases loaded and no further damage down. Still, that's 12 walks and 17 strikeouts in only 13.2 innings: there's rarely nothing eventful about a Juan Cruz relief appearance. Nothing much to write home about at the plate, as we managed only four hits and two walks, while fanning twelve times. Jackson was the only player to reach safely more than once, getting both free passes.

I do wonder why Burke got the start - he went 0-for-3, to reduce his season average to .140, while Ojeda has his pinch-hit single, increasing his BA to .368. One also questions what purpose Robbie Hammock serves on the roster, now he has apparently fallen out of favor as Randy Johnson's personal catcher. In seventeen games the D-backs have played since Hammock's last start, he has just five plate-appearances - and three of those were in the extra-inning defeat to the Padres on the 26th. Speaking of catchers, Chris Snyder gets props, saying he has worked with hitting coach Rick Schu: "Chris’ bat speed is really good when that (left) shoulder really stays closed and his hands work," Schu said. Whatever they're doing is clearly working.

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Master of his domain: Dan Haren, +9.2%
God-emperor of suck: Eric Byrnes, -13.2%

Only two D-backs made it into positive territory win-wise: Haren, despite being tagged with the L, and Jackson, at +4.7%. The WP dip in the eighth inning will henceforth be known as the Byrnes Trench. Thanks to those who skipped work or otherwise made it the day game this afternoon. Present, at least in spirit, at Wrigley were: El Stuart, 4 Corners Fan, kishi, njjohn, hotclaws, foulpole, Turambar, isoldout, singaporedbacksfan, IndyDBack, dahlian, Craig from Az, TwinnerA, Augie's Army, shoewizard, DbacksSkins, Azreous, Snakebitten, Xeifrank, snakecharmer, peeklay, manphibian, srdmad and soco.

Another day game tomorrow, with Scherzer getting his second start - hopefully with better results. Disturbing to realize that we just lost the game pitched by our best starter this series, but it looks unlikely to lose us any real ground, as the Astros are 6-0 up over the Dodgers with two outs in the bottom of the seventh. And with that, I'm off to dose myself with NyQuil and go to sleep!

Record: 13-4. Pace: 124-38. Change on last season: +3.

Today's game perhaps illustrated the greatest difference between this team and previous versions of the Diamondbacks. Last year, if the team was behind 3-1, and their only hit in the first five innings had been by their pitcher, it would probably have been time to plan for tomorrow. [In 2007, we were 10-50 when trailing after five innings] However, watching today's game, I felt little or no sense of despondency, more a calm certainty that our offense would come around. And lo, we scored a run in the sixth, added two more in the seventh to take the lead, and then blew it open by once again putting up a six-spot, Conor Jackson making both the first and the last out of the eighth inning.

I don't know if the Padres bullpen were still suffering a hangover from their 14 innings of work on Thursday. But Thatcher and Cameron, who'd thrown 24 and 27 pitches respectively in that marathon, proved pleasantly ineffective, combining for 1.2 innings, six hits, four walks and eight runs - though five were unearned, thanks to a complete miss of a grounder by Khalil Greene [I'm pretty sure the Gameday Thread resounded to the rafters after that one, though I have yet to check]. Thanks to the wildness [seven walks in total], we scored ten runs on only nine hits: Upton had a pair, though Byrnes reached safely twice on two walks and a hit.

Credit also to Jackson, who singled, then stole second and came home to score the tying run in the sixth on a single by Reynolds [Special K was thrown out on an ill-advised attempt to reach second, though the camera missed it entirely - all we got to see was Reynolds rolling in the infield dirt about ten feet past the base. Not quite sure what happened there] I know stealing off Josh Bard is like robbing the blind little match-girl, but he did so with such ease, I wouldn't be surprised to see him doing more. He seemed to enjoy showing off the new-found wheels: Jackson already has more triples this season (three) than in his 310 prior career games.

On the other hand, what was up with Orlando Hudson? I think someone needs to buy him a copy of the Official Rules. Last week, he tries to advance on an infield fly, then this afternoon, after our first two hitters get on, he tries to bunt them along, but gets called out for batter's interference, because his back foot was very obviously not in the box. Even if he'd done it right, it seems a strange decision - after the pitcher has walked the first two hitters, I'd be inclined to take a couple of pitches, and not give him an easy out, especially with the nuclear offense we are running out there these days. Did he do that on his own? Inquiring minds want to know: he has been scuffling lately, just 5-for-27 in the last seven games.

Solid enough outing by Edgar Gonzalez, who went six innings, allowing three earned runs on four hits and four walks - he battled control problems, but the only damage came on a pair of long balls. Some discussion in the thread about how what we should expect from EdGon. While I share Foulpole and Phil's concern about his HR rate, Jeff Sackmann took a look at this over at The Hardball Times, and found that the ERA of the average #5 pitcher in 2006 was a meaty 6.24. In his 32 starts, Gonzalez's ERA is now 5.69 - and that's pitching in a distinctly hitter-friendly home-park. I don't think even Edgar's mother would describe him as a potential Cy Young winner, but as a back of the rotation fill-in until Doug Davis returns, he's a lot better than most teams have available. [In another piece, Sackmann also found most teams use between ten and twelve starters per season, suggesting that depth is an important aspect of any rotation]

Elsewhere on the pitching side, is anyone else a little concerned about Juan Cruz? Sure, his ERA is a very nice 2.35, with only four hits in 7.2 innings. But after today, he has now walked eight hitters already - tied for most on the club, even including all the starters. Last season, he'd only walked eight hitters on June 7, though did have some time on the DL. His raw "stuff' seems as good as ever; I think I saw him hit 99 mph on the radar gun this afternoon. But a lot of the pitches that were missing the mark were not anywhere close to the plate. No damage today though; still, something to keep an eye on. Chad Qualls extended his scoreless streak with another zero, and Brandon Lyon, having warmed up, pitched a 1-2-3 ninth in what was a non-save situation, thanks to our six runs in the bottom of the eighth.

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Master of his domain: Chris Young, +23.4%
Honorary mention: Stephen Drew, +22.2%
God-emperor of suck: Orlando Hudson, +12.8%

I got to watch this one at my sister-in-law's, while enjoying some extremely tender ribs [not normally a fan; much like wings, they're often more trouble than they're worth, but these just fell off the bone], tiramisu and Stella Artois. The latter may have been partly responsible for my complete failure to understand Joe Garagiola Sr. when he started trying to burble about BABIP and what it meant. I love Joe, and think it's great he's trying to understand the new baseball math - even if the result is like watching your grandfather attempt to program the iPod he was given as an ill-advised Christmas present. However...a little more edumification on the basics, before attempting to discuss it on television, would help avoid him sound like the infamous "the Internet is a series of tubes" politician.

Anyway, present in the Gameday Thread here were: paqs, Captain D Bag, peachy rex, kishi, foulpole, DbacksSkins, soco, Philip from LA, seton hall snake pit, Snakebitten [welcome!], azshadowwalker, dahlian, Wimb, 4 Corners Fan, hotclaws [loved the macro!], Craig from Az, njjohn, singaporedbacksfan, Songbird and oklahomasooners. Though Skins appeared to spend more time over at GLB, posting pics of co-eds, in an apparently successful attempt to thaw relations with them. Perhaps this is something the State Department should look into: "Hey, Al Qaeda! Drop the jihad stuff and we'll give you all lifetime subscriptions to Maxim." It's insane, but...it...just...might...work...

Anyway, another series win in the back, and we continue to roll, with our fourth win in a row. The Rockies have matched us there, but the Padres (5.5 back) and Dodgers (six behind) are already beginning to find themselves looking up at a sizable gap. We've now scored exactly double the runs of our opponents in the 17 games so far, 112-56 - no other team in the majors has even reached three figures for runs. Long may that continue. And, finally, some good news on the Doug Davis front:

Nine days after undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer, Arizona LHP Doug Davis threw from 120 feet on Saturday afternoon. "I felt real good out there throwing the ball," Davis said. "I don’t feel any different right now than I did before surgery. A little sore in the neck area." Davis has targeted May 9 at the Chicago Cubs for his return to the rotation.

Get well soon, Doug, needless to say.