Padilla (7-11, 4.32)
Vargas (7-7, 4.99)
- Craig Counsell, 2B
- Royce Clayton, SS
- Luis Gonzalez, LF
- Tony Clark, 1B
- Troy Glaus, 3B
- Shawn Green, CF
- Chad Tracy, RF
- Kelly Stinnett, C
- Claudio Vargas, P
Look! A proper Gameday Thread - y'know, in advance of the actual game, y'know? :-) Having won yesterday, at least we should no longer quite feel as if we're trying to kick our way off a funeral cart. "We're not dead! We're getting better - think we'll go for a walk..."
Having taste the sweet delight of victory, can we now repeat, and stretch our winning sequence to a mighty two games - something that has happened so far only once in the whole month of August? It's a Sunday evening game, which I think is probably what threw me off yesterday: day games on Saturdays and night ones on Sunday aren't the usual schedule.
Not expecting a lot of runs here - at least, not for us. Padilla has been stellar recently, with a 2.38 ERA and 1.14 WHIP over his past ten starts. Vargas has been almost as good, but you'd need to draw a veil (or, more likely, a body-bag) over his last start, when he allowed eight runs and ten hits in five innings. We can do without that, needless to say.
A win here would give us a little bit of momentum to take into the San Diego series next week, the latest in a long series of series (as it were), that will determine the fate of our season. No, really: this one counts. Honest! Oh, and memo to self: Wednesday's game has a 12:35 start, Arizona time...