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There's no place like home... After a 2-7 roadtrip, the Diamondbacks might be glad to get back to Chase, even though their record there of late has been close to the .500 mark. Still, we hardly have seen the home field at all in June: this will be only the eighth game of the month here. At least our players will get familiar again with Phoenix: after the home-stand comes the All-Star break, and we start the second half of the season at Chase too, so nobody - except perhaps Webb and Haren, who may be occupied in New York during the break - needs to go too far.
We dodge something of a bullet in this series, playing four games against the Brewers, but not having to face Ben Sheets. Overall, I think we have the pitching edge in the first and last game, while the visitors do in the middle two: it's therefore very important Davis performs well tonight, and sets the tone for the series. Could be a bit of a pitcher's duel: over the past three starts, Bush has allowed five runs in 21 innings, and Davis four in 20.
The offenses will be key, and in particular, which will be less sucky: Milwaukee and Arizona have both struggled on their recent road-trips: the Brewers have scored 3.5 runs per game in the six games so far, while Arizona averaged only 2.4 per game on their swing from Minnesota through Boston to Florida. The visitors swept Arizona during the first series between the teams in early June, taking all three games by a total of 21-5, so the Diamondbacks need to play an awful lot better to stay in this series.
Will probably be late to this one, since we've got to get replacement tyres put on the Snakepitmobile on the way home from work. Not sure how long that'll take, but I'll be home as soon as we get out of there, and will hopefully find us with a nice lead. Hey, optimism is a good thing, right?