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Games until the blessed, merciful end of the season: 6.
Before I forget, a minor point of amusement I noted from the opener of today's double-header between the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins. Both pitchers involved in the decision had ended last year playing for the Diamondbacks: Jon Rauch took the win for Minnesota, while Brandon Lyon gave up two runs in the tenth, not helped by a couple of wild pitches, and took the loss. Just wanted to mention that. Oh, and if you're looking for something to do on Thursday night, why not try the Charles Band Full Moon Horror Roadshow - see here for more details and to buy tickets. After the jump, I'll talk about the current Diamondbacks...
The last week of the season gets under way for Arizona, with a road-trip that starts in San Francisco for three games, before we finish the season in Chicago. The Giants faded from the wild-card race thanks to losing seven of their last eleven games, and are now basically playing out the season: not yet mathematically eliminated, but defeat at our hands tonight could bring that to pass, if the Rockies win too. Still, already with eleven more wins than last year, this would probably have to be counted as a successful year, with their starting pitching in particular developing very nicely. They have four starters with an ERA+ above 100, and a very solid bullpen. If only they'd spent the money that went to RJ on the offense, which ended up as the league-worst.
We face Jonathan 'not him again' Sanchez for the fifth time this season; he's done a very solid job of keeping Arizona in check, posting a 2.19 ERA in 24.2 innings of work again us. He took the win last Wednesday at Chase, going up against Kevin Mulvey, but Doug Davis might be a tougher opponent. Or he might not: familiarity seems to have helped the Giants, who will be seeing Davis for the sixth time in 2009: they have hit pretty well since he shut them out for eight innings on April 19, and overall have a 4.64 ERA in 33 innings. He did win last Tuesday, albeit mostly because we'd scored nine runs in support of Davis by the end of the third.
Line-up
- Chris Young CF
- Stephen Drew SS
- Justin Upton RF
- Mark Reynolds 3B
- Miguel Montero C
- Ryan Roberts LF
- Rusty Ryal 1B
- Augie Ojeda 2B
- Doug Davis P
Should be about for most of this, though I've got a bunch of movie reviews to write. Took advantage of the off-day yesterday and slothed out in front of back-to-back-to-back movies in the living-room - don't think we've done that all baseball season, but it's a good warmup for what we'll be doing after Sunday! However, will likely be in the office with the TV on in the living-room, so expect the occasional comment as the game progresses. Here's to a good - maybe even winning? - road-trip, to give us some cause for optimism in 2009. 70 wins looks a lot better than 69...