I can just imagine Dan Haren waking up this morning, fully-rested after a full eight hours of sleep at home in his bed. He enjoys breakfast on the patio, some orange juice and a croissant, perhaps some eggs over-easy, as he reads the paper. And then, he starts laughing hysterically when he reaches last night's game between the Rockies and the Padres and sees the box-score...and the box-score... And the box-score [cont. p.13]. Yes, tonight, Dan will be pitching against the Padres of the Living Dead after they lost a 22-inning heartbreaker in Petco against the Rockies.
I was joking when I told 'Charmer she was responsible for setting up an overthrow thread for last night, but we came a lot closer than I expected. Though the Off-day Open Thread seemed to be a hit anyway, with discussion on a wide variety of topics. But just a note of appreciation: other sites need rules forbidding the discussion of politics; you folk won't even talk about it when I extend an open invitation! However, when Kishi mentioned the SD-COL game was scoreless in the seventh, I imagine he probably didn't think the game would finally be over about 250 comments and almost five hours later...
Just for fun, let's have a roll-call on those who commented from that point on - s'funny, thinking back, I believe that our last non-Dbacks Gameday Thread was also between the Rockies and Padres, #163 last year. Anyway, present were kishi, seton hall snake pit, peachy rex, DbacksSkins [thanks for Wednesday's recap], SongBird [welcome!], Azreous, Captain D Bag, singaporedbacksfan, snakecharmer, soco, Philip from LA [welcome!], Zephon and dstorm - as well as paqs who plowed his own lonely furrow! Here are a few random facts about the marathon game in question:
First pitch at
7:05 p.m. Last pitch: 1:21 a.m.,
Longest MLB game since Aug. 31, 1993 [Minnesota beat Cleveland
5-4 in 22 innings].
Longest game in Rockies history.
Longest game in Petco Park.
Most innings for the Padres
One minute short of the longest by time for San Diego.
659 pitches, by 15 pitchers.
Taveras had ten at-bats, the first such game since Fernando Vina on April 27, 2003.
The Padres have now gone 94 innings without a home-run.
Normally, this would all be of little more than academic interest, a curious blip on the baseball radar - except for one thing. We're playing the Padres tonight, and one could hardly have wished a more draining, demoralizing fate on the second-place team in the division. The ace of your team throws eight innings of shutout ball, but you can't score even once. You then don't just burn relievers, you incinerate almost every arm in your bullpen, working fourteen innings and allowing one earned run. But you still lose, on an unearned run in the 22nd, with the game not finishing until after 1am, and then have to get on a plane and travel to your next opponent.
Specifically, Arizona simply needs to be patient with Greg Maddux tonight. He's not exactly the Ironman of the Padres rotation: he hasn't thrown even 100 pitches in a game, since July 19, 2006. If we can make him work - say, get him out of the game after five innings - then we'll see what's left of the Padres' bullpen. Put our foot on their throat there, and we'll have a huge advantage for the rest of the weekend too. In addition, I doubt we'll see Josh Bard, who caught all 22 innings last night. Expect the D-backs to have their wheels up as soon as they reach first base. It should be a lot of fun: it's also going to be our first game of the season, so all the more reason to anticipate it. However, Gameday Thread, etc. to follow later...