Record: 4-8. Pace: 54-108. Change on last season: -5.
I thought about recycling Jim's recap from Friday's game, but figured somebody might notice. Dan Haren Max Scherzer took the mound for Arizona today, giving up only 1 1 run; however, the Dbacks' offense continued to be AWOL, as the team's bats were shut down by Ubaldo Jimenez Francisco Morales Eric Stults Randy Wolf Todd Wellemeyer Jonathan Sanchez Tim Lincecum Randy Johnson. Max struck out 6 Giants, but 2 of them were Johnson.
RJ was absolutely dominating on the bump for the Giants, every pitch seemingly thundering like an Arc Light strike. The Diamondbacks willingly complied with Randy's game plan, finally accomplishing what they could not last year: getting RJ his 296th career win, and his first W in '09. The team was, however, able to break up the chances of the Unit's 2nd perfect game and 3rd no-hitter, Augie Ojeda getting the littlest double to lead off the 7th. Tony Clark and Ryan Roberts also drew walks. I attribute this superb offensive success to the whole of the Snakepit trying to jinx RJ by talking, first, about his perfect game, and second, about his no-hitter. Perhaps we should have mentioned his shutout as well.
Scherzer pitched 5 frames and gave up only 3 hits, however, Mad Max suffered some control issues: 4 walks, including a BB to Prince of Darkness Randy Winn, who eventually came around to score San Francisco's first run on an RBI sac fly by .161-hitting Travis Ishikawa. Scherzer loaded the bases in the 4th inning, so to only give up a single run has to be counted as a victory. Max went for a somewhat surprising 104 pitches today before being lifted for Mark Reynolds in the 6th. Continuing the theme of offensive (not only offensive, but REVOLTING too! Har har har) fail, Reynolds dutifully grounded into a double play to erase Ryan Roberts, who had reached on a walk. If there IS a silver lining to be found here, it might be that the Dbacks as a team only left one runner on base. After Tony Clark drew a walk in the 5th and was erased by Chris Young's groundout, CY, eager to get back to the Valley, was picked off by Johnson and caught stealing 2nd.
Reynolds stayed in the game to play 3rd, no doubt because of his exciting defensive skillz, but Roberts had made his first start of the year at 3rd. "Interesting" choice, given that Roberts is now batting .200 on the season. Along the same lines, Tony Clark started at 1st and Eric Byrnes started in LF. Clark makes SOME sense, I guess, in that he had been 4-8 in his career against RJ with a homer, while Conor Jackson's been struggling and Chad Tracy looks like a little girl against LHPs. But, naturally, Clark sucked -- only slightly less than everyone else, this time. Our other batter with some past success against RJ was the hot-hitting Lopez, who had been 4-9 also with a HR. Lopez went ohfer, as did almost all of our lineup. Augie started at short since J.D. Stephen Drew's still out, and Augie made a rare fielding mistake in the 8th, inexplicably going for the double play with no outs. What made it inexplicable was the fact that Bengie Molina, slower than a snail on opiates, lumbered from 3rd to home to score the game's final run.
I have to admit that I was skeptical when Miggy praised him over the winter, but Juan Gutierrez had another good relief outing, pitching the 6th and 7th innings while giving up only 1 hit and 1 walk. Greg Schulte pointed out, at the time, that as a converted starter, Gutierrez has more pitches than Jose Valverde, and might end up even being better than Valverde. In the 8th, Jon Rauch continued in his solo effort to make the Carlos Quentin trade look good in comparison, facing two batters and giving up two hits. Melvin had a short leash on his giant reliever today, bringing on Schoeneweis just in time to give up the Giants' second run. After pulling Shoe as well, making him and Rauch sit in the corner of the dugout to think about what they'd done, Tony Pena came in to clean up the mess and got three quick outs. I'm really not sure why Melvin keeps using Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in ANY game in which the margin is fewer than 10 runs. Rauch is in the midst of a VERY impressive streak of suck, having now given up run(s) in 5 of the 7 games he's appeared in. Somebody call Cooperstown.
Dbacks did even worse after Randy left the game; Bob Howry and Brian Wilson went for a perfect 8th and 9th inning, respectively. All in all, NOT a very good day for the Diamondbacks. There are rumors in the clubhouse that the Dbacks' starting rotation is getting together to make a movie. Should be a good flick:
Elsewhere, those vastly underrated Rockies were destroyed by the Dodgers, 14-2, despite solo homers from Chris Iannetta and Brad Hawpe. Ubaldo Jimenez threw 4.1 strong lousy innings, giving up 7, and the fightin' Mannys completed the sweep. Rox remain just a half game ahead of the Dbacks, at 4-7, but either way, that's guaranteed to change tomorrow when we return to Phoenix for another 9 game homestand. Let's hope this one goes slightly better than the last one. In other news, I have a feeling that Russ has just finally banned me from Purple Row.
Thanks to everyone who posted in the Gameday Thread, including Pyromnc, unnamedDBacksfan, LucaMaz3, soco, mrssoco, Jim McLennan, kishi, TAP, Sprankton, emilylovesthedbacks, hotclaws, chem, Diamondhacks, Tim Weiss, DbacksSkins, venomfan, victor frankenstein, J Up, Wailord, Scrbl, Muu, AF DBacks Fanatic, Quin, luckycc, Wimb, IndyDBack, haas, dbacksbj. Nearly 500 comments on this Sunday afternoon, and for what may be the first time this year, yours truly was not first in quantity of comments -- nor even second. Nope, in fact, my new protégé, Pyromnc, was the only poster in triple digits. Kishi was second, with 40, edging me by one. 'Hacks just sent me a very nice thank you note.
Badass of the day: Max Scherzer, +13.2%
Boarding the bus to Reno: Chris Young, -18%
Shoulda stayed in bed: Felipe Lopez, -13.5%; Chris Snyder, -11.3%; Mark Reynolds: -11.1%
I place all blame on Melvin for this one, as he forgot to inform the team that Randy Johnson pitching a 1-hitter in a Dbacks game is no longer a GOOD thing. Max Scherzer is now 0-5 in the big leagues, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is a total bust as a draft pick and a pitcher's W/L record is not total bullshit. Jon Garland, whose 1-1 record proves that he's obviously a better pitcher than Max, pitches tomorrow, matching up against former two-time Diamondback Jorge De La Rosa, who's looking for his first win of the season. More importantly, tomorrow is JennyFest/The Jenning/MiniSnakePitFestApaloozaThonFair! Hope to see a lot of you there.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a bottle of Jack Daniel's. It's a LOOONG season.
