Gameday Thread, #99: 7/27 vs. Pirates

Virgil Vasquez RHP, 1-4, 5.54

Max Scherzer RHP, 5-6, 3.86

Max Scherzer has been lucky, in that the quality of opposing batters he's had to face is among the lowest in the major-leagues - he's ranked #115 of 116 pitchers with 80+ innings, when measured by the OPS of those they've seen. And that streak continues today: he starts against Pittsburgh, 12th-ranked in the NL and Scherzer gets to skip over the league-leading Phillies, whose team OPS is more than seventy points better than the Pirates. Here's to him taking advantage and evening his record.

Speaing of offense, Arizona's - so sluggish in the first half - has been excellent since the break, they have a line of .276/.341/.478, an OPS of .820, good for third in the league. And with two-thirds of these games being on the road, the impact of Chase can't be held completely responsible. Neither can BABIP; at .314, it's a little above league average (.298), but they're only sixth-highest there. They're tied for the lead in extra-base hits (with the Cubs, on 36), so that hints that they are driving the ball better. Hopefully that'll continue.

Vasquez certainly looks like a candidate to help, though the W-L record is a bit misleading, since in his four defeats, the Pirates scored a total of four runs. Only in one - a 1.1 IP, 5 ER outing in Philadelphia - could Vasquez be said not to have kept his team in the game. Still, opponents have hit .304 off him, and a K:BB ratio of 16:11 shouldn't be a cause for concern either. We just need to get base-runners, as Vasquez seems to have horrendous difficulty pitching from the stretch. Small sample size caveat applies: but when men are aboard, opponents' BA in his career jumps from .298 to .370, then to .405 with RISP. Our gameplan pretty much writes itself...

Line-up

1. Stephen Drew SS


2. Gerardo Parra LF


3. Justin Upton RF


4. Mark Reynolds 3B


5. Miguel Montero C


6. Chris Young CF


7. Josh Whitesell 1B


8. Ryan Roberts 2B


9. Max Scherzer P

Last Sunday before the trade deadline, so that informs the poll question. We've discussed various trade candidates over the past few days, thanks to IHateSouthBend's excellent series - and here seems a good place to announce his promotion to authorship status. But the poll is to ask who you think is most likely to be gone from the Diamondbacks between now and the deadline? I'll keep that open until someone is traded or we reach the deadline. See if you can predict it correctly...

Hoping to see all of this one: got to run to the supermarket, but should be back in time for first pitch and have cleared the decks [or, at least, put off watching a great deal more British genre TV] until afterwards. I hope the Diamondbacks reward such effort on their behalf with a win, and give soco something good to write about on the recap afterwards.