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After the unexpected - if Maalox-heavy - pleasures of smacking the Rockies' ace around yesterday, we move on to what most people, coming in, would have called our best chance to win a game. Having taken one yesterday, despite some fairly obvious flaws in our play, it'd sure be nice to cash in today and seal a series win on the road. Heck, Arizona hasn't opened the season 2-0 since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling helped blank the Padres in back-to-back games at the start of 2002. Be nice to do so this year.
We faced Mr. Rose twice last year, and did okay: beat him at Chase, lost to him in Denver, as he allowed six earned runs in 13 innings of work (a 4.15 ERA). Chris Young has the best numbers lifetime, with a .975 OPS in 24 PAs, but Ryan Roberts is 5-for-12 with a walk, so he could see action [still waiting for the line-up as I write]. He has been pretty tough on lefties; their career line against him is .243 /.327/.365, a .692 OPS, with 14 HR in over 600 at-bats by southpaws. Wondering who we'll see at first-base today: neither Miranda nor Branyan have seen de la Rosa before. Oh, look: here's the team.
- Willie Bloomquist SS
- Kelly Johnson 2B
- Justin Upton RF
- Chris Young CF
- Ryan Roberts 3B
- Miguel Montero C
- Xavier Nady 1B
- Gerardo Parra LF
- Daniel Hudson RHP
Roberts replaces Melvin Mora at third - is that the sound of dancing in the streets I hear? And Mora is a rightie, so it's not as if we get a platoon advantage by using Roberts. Interesting. Rather than the "regular" first-basemen, Nady gets his first appearance of the year, which does seem like a move to make our line-up less sinister [in the original meaning, anyway - no line-up with Bloomquist leading off is ever going to mistaken for the Khmer Rouge].
Hudson shut down the Rockies entirely the only time he faced them, throwing seven shutout innings at Chase on Aug. 22 last year. But he got a no-decision, as we failed to score off Jhoulys Chacin either, and Colorado won 1-0, getting their run in the eighth, courtesy of Aaron Heilman. Of course, this is now the shiny, adamantium bullpen, which is clearly going to go through the season posting a 0.00 ERA, so there's absolutely no chance of anything like that happeneing again.... Yeah, it might be a while before I fully trust them.
Wailord on the recap for this one; we'll see how many comments show up, but I'm thinking overflow up at the first inning end after we reach a thousand, assuming there's at least two left i.e. not if it's the end of the eighth. Let's keep kicking Rockies ass and seal the series tonight.