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Games until the blessed, merciful end of the season: 4.
Before we get to the game, let's discuss Keira Knightley's breasts. There. That made you sit up and take notice - or sigh and roll your eyes, but at this point of the season, I'll take any reaction which proves you people still have a pulse. This is not a cheap search-engine optimization ploy, designed purely to get us Google hits. Well, not just a cheap search-engine optimization ploy - they are also a metaphor for the 2009 Diamondbacks season. We were watching King Arthur last night, in which she plays an Amazonesque Guinevere. However, for the US marketing campaign, her bosom was deemed inadequate and so was digitally enhanced. The disappointment felt by many American men (and a small subset of women) on being drawn in by this, will be familiar to Arizona fans - for we, too had, er, big expectations, which fell, ah, flat.
Hey, if you folk can do bear puns...
Haren vs. Lincecum today - ace vs. ace, and it would be nice, in a number of ways to beat Timmy. It'd probably be the final nail in his hopes of repearing in the Cy Young, since 14-game winners just don't get that award. It would also give us a much better chance of reaching 70 wins on the season, which as noted before, looks a lot better on the permanent record than 69. Draft picks be damned!
I won't be easy. In sixteen innings this year against Lincecum, we have managed only one run, on ten hits and a walk, while the Diamondbacks have struck out 25 times. That's about par for the course - over his eight career starts against us, Lincecum has a 1.76 ERA and we've beaten him only once, though the Giants' record is a less-impressive 4-4 in those contests. That may be our best hope: hang on for as long as we can, and hope he doesn't throw a complete game. Yeah. Not exactly a bedrock of solid faith, is it? But given how we have struggled against bad pitchers, I'm not exactly looking forward to us facing anyone decent.
The good news is, we do have Dan Haren going for us. This isn't quite as much good news as it was in the first-half, when his ERA was 2.01; since the break, it has been 4.44, and his K:BB rate has dropped to about 4:1, compared to over 8:1 before the All-Star Game. His previous two starts have each resulted in five earned runs, with the last one also having a season-high tying three walks. I get a feeling we will need better than that from him today, since I sincerely doubt we will be troubling Taco Bell tomorrow.
Line-up
- Chris Young cf .207
- Stephen Drew ss .257
- Justin Upton rf .304
- Miguel Montero c .299
- Mark Reynolds 3b .263
- Gerardo Parra lf .288
- Chad Tracy 1b .236
- Augie Ojeda 2b .248
- Dan Haren p .254
Despite the stellar pitching match-up for this day game, it's not televised here in Arizona. And I'll be at work, which obviously severely limits my chances to follow things. Will be popping in at lunchtime and scheduling breaks appropriately. September review will follow later today: I'll be at the Charles Band Full Moon Horror roadshow tonight, but there is wi-fi, so I'll be able to get that done when not hobnobbing with Hollywood superstars... But let's try and win one for Keira...
