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A possibility of a sweep! And we're not playing the Mets! Bring on those brooms, I say: win today, and we'd be only twenty games back, with fifty to play. Go, us! Today sees the third start of one of our sparkling trade deadline acquisitions: so far, Saunders and Dan Hudson are 3-0 with a 1.42 ERA. [This would be why it's increasingly hard to compare Hinch and Gibson's W% straight-up] Can Saunders keep it up, against young phenom Latos? Will Arizona turn him into a door-Mat?
'Skins, you can have that title for your recap, free of charge...
We've not faced Latos before, but for a 22-year old kid, his numbers are impressive. Even outside of the comfy confines of San Diego, he has posted a 2.66 ERA in 12 starts, so it's not as if he is a Petco product. Overall, he has held batters to a sub-Ueckerian average of .195: not bad for an eleventh-round pick in 2006. We could have had him. But instead used our 11th-round pick on Daniel Fournier, who dropped out of baseball in 2008 after going 0-3 with a 6.94 ERA at South Bend. [Shakes fist in direction of San Diego] Adam LaRoche and Ryan Church are the only D-backs with any experience against Latos, and we're only talking five PAs in total.
Saunders faced the Padres last year, during interleague play, and more or less shut them down, pitching into the ninth and allowing only one run, as Anaheim beat San Diego, 9-1. All told, current Padres are hitting below .200 off the Colonel too - 6-for-31 - so if I had to guess, I would probably take the under on today's score. Hoping to see Mark Reynolds back in the line-up, though the team has coped admirably without him. I probably won't be about, resting and recovering after yesterday's tiring, but thoroughly entertaining, event, in preparation for the road-trip where I'm on five of the next six recaps. 'Skins is, as noted above, on recap duty today.