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Back home to Arizona - 19 of our remaining 31 games are now at Chase. Meanwhile, the only team above .500 we'll see the rest of the way are likely to be the Giants, unless the Rockies [currently five below even] can pull something out of the hat. To have reached this point in the season with a three-game lead in the division still defies belief: I keep thinking that I'll wake up suddenly, to find out that I've been dozing on the couch, and Buster Posey has just hit a three-run homer off Edwin Jackson, to clinch the West for the Giants on August 9th. And then, the screaming starts...
- Willie Bloomquist SS
- Ryan Roberts 3B
- Justin Upton RF
- Chris Young CF
- Paul Goldschmidt 1B
- Aaron Hill 2B
- Gerardo Parra LF
- Henry Blanco C
- Josh Collmenter RHP
Bloomquist back in the lead-off spot, despite my fondly-expressed hope this was now a thing of the past. Hey, at least Parra is batting ahead of Blanco. I must confess, I haven't been paying much attention to the Padres since we last played them about a month ago. But turns out that they've had the second-best record in the West since then, going 14-11 [trailing only our 15-11[, so I am not expecting this to be a pushover. With the Giants facing the hap-less J.A. Happ, who is tied for the NL lead in losses (14), we should not expect San Francisco to do us any favors - very amenable though they have been of late. Win here, get one of our magic number and anything else is a bonus.