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Tonight promises to be one of the stranger games in Diamondbacks' history. Jon Garland arrived in Los Angeles on the Arizona roster, and will pitch this evening as scheduled - however, he'll be going against the Diamondbacks, not for them. I'm not sure whether this will give us any kind of advantage or not. Arizona have swatted Garland about pretty well in their previous encounters, but the most recent of those was more than four years ago and Chad Tracy is the only AZ survivor of that day [a game started by Russ Ortiz for us - we led 6-1 in the middle of the fifth and lost, thanks to a ten-spot in the bottom of the sixth for the White Sox]
Billy Buckner returns to the rotation, making his first start since June - a wretched one against Anaheim, where he allowed seven runs in 1.2 innings. I'm still trying to work out if he should be regarded as part of the Triple-Headed Beast of Webb Replacement, or has now been spawned off into an entirely new creature, Replacementus Garlandii. He did very well in his previous outing against the Dodgers on June 1st in Chavez Ravine, shutting them out for six innings, but an overall 8.63 ERA is not exactly causing me optimism.
Still, we could take the four-game series and are guaranteed at least a split - a very credible feat, given we are on the road, facing the team with the best record in the National League, and without a start from our staff ace. It's been the pitching which has been getting it done, with a 2.33 ERA over the 27 innings of this series, and it will probably be the pitching that needs to do it again. Keeping Mandy to a line of .250/.250/.500 this week has certainly been a big plus, especially given how much he has hurt the Diamondbacks in the past.
Line-up
- Ryan Roberts 2B
- Stephen Drew SS
- Justin Upton RF
- Miguel Montero C
- Mark Reynolds 3B
- Brandon Allen 1B
- Gerardo Parra LF
- Chris Young CF
- Billy Buckner P
A rare departure for Mark from the #4 spot: in his 66 starts since June 16, he's batted elsewhere than clean-up exactly twice. He has been struggling of late - since Aug 11, he is hitting only .179, so it might be wise to drop him down the order a little. Let's see if Upton can manage to maintain his torrid pace - even after going 0-forr-4 last night, he's hitting .441 in the eight games after returning from the DL. Should be about for much of this one, so maybe we can crack a thousand comments tonight?