|
||
|
Through this entire season, the pitchers we've done best against have often been those who you think would be really tough on Arizona. And conversely - as last night - the ones I've thought we'd torch like a badly-wired Chinese Christmas tree, have often given us severe problems. Therefore, we present the dark horse 2006 Rookie of the Year candidate, Jonathan Sanchez, who has never been beaten in his major-league career. Please do not allow yourself to be distracted by his last outing (eight earned runs in two innings), if we can squib out a couple of infield hits, I'll be happy. Any Arizona Diamondback hitters should please stop reading here.
...
They gone? Good. Okay, the reality is, this is the kind of hitter, on whom we should absolutely tee off. If the Brewers can score eight runs off him, we should be able to match that. He was pretty damn good out of the bullpen: he came up May 28, but didn't concede his first earned run until July 8th, in his fifteenth appearance and thirteenth inning. When he was sent down at the end of July, he had an ERA of 1.37 in 19.2 innings, but called back up into the rotation this month, the results have been less flattering: three starts, never finished the sixth, 13 runs in 12.1 innings, on 16 hits and seven walks. Our batters should be queueing up for this one, though he has struck out 13.
We send up Claudio Vargas. It seems like it was only yesterday he pitched, but perhaps that's connected to the recurrent nightmare I have, where our rotation consists of 5 x him. That'll wake you up in a cold sweat. However, he was actually pretty good in his last outing, keeping the Dodgers off the board until Drew's homer in the seventh. Meanwhile, we were shut-out, so he got a tough loss, the first time this year he's picked up an L which giving up less than three runs. Usually, when he's good, he wins: in his eleven victories this year, he's pitched 68.2 innings, allowing just 14 earned runs for an ERA in them of just 1.83.
Crap, just realised it was a 12:35pm start, not 1:05. Post! Quickly!