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Second call for a spot recapper to cover Monday... Let us know if anyone can cover...
Should be an interesting pitching match-up today. In Dan We Trust, because if anyone can shut down Albert, it's got to be Dan Haren - unjustly robbed of an All-Star start, but we'll settle for a second-half as good as the first, and another Cy Young winner from the Diamondbacks. He's thrown nine straight starts allowing two earned runs or less - a streak not surpassed by one of our pitchers since Randy Johnson had fourteen such games consecutively in 1999 [somehow managing to have a losing record of 5-6 in that time, despite six complete outings and a 1.51 ERA].
Wainwright has been pretty good too, and sports a 2.59 ERA in four starts against Arizona - we didn't face him during the April series at Chase. Small sample-sizes for most of our hitters: Lopez has the best record, having gone 4-for-9, with Reynolds' 3-for-10 also not too bad. Drew's 2-for-13 is not so impressive, but lefties generally have done significantly better against Wainwright this year (OPS .787, vs. .585 for RHB). Haven't looked at the line-up yet, but wouldn't be surprised to see that reflected on Hinch's card. Let's see, shall we?
- Felipe Lopez 2B
- Stephen Drew SS
- Justin Upton RF
- Mark Reynolds 3B
- Miguel Montero C
- Gerardo Parra CF
- Josh Whitesell 1B
- Alex Romero LF
- Dan Haren P
There you go. Chris Young sits, so we get southpaw Romero into the line-up as well. Has to be said, the roster construction makes this a little trickier: our 1B and his back-up (Chad Tracy) are both left-handed, for example, so not much to be done there. Still, Upton and Reynolds are the only 'pure' RHB to start for us as position players this afternoon. Need to win this one, probably to avoid the sweep, since I'm not holding out much hope for Petit in tomorrow's game.