Diamondbacks 1, Mets 3: Harvey Dents Arizona Bats, Man

Record: 49-50. Pace: 80-82. Change on last year: -4.

I'm going to presume that if you're reading this you either didn't watch the game, or you want to torture yourself. Either way, here's all you need to know about this game: Matt Harvey, rookie pitcher, strikes out 11. Diamondbacks, not good, strand 11 baserunners and strike out a total 16 times, back under .500.

It's hard to win a game when you only score one run. And it's hard to put yourself into position to score when you strike out 16 times. The strikeouts aren't completely, to blame, however, given that the D-backs did manage to get some baserunners. They just never put anything together that suggested a semi-competent offensive effort.

The Mets weren't particularly impressive, either, but they didn't need to do much. Ruben Tejada and Daniel Murphy led the game off with back to back singles, and they'd both be brought around on a double by Scott Hairston. In the 3rd inning Andres Torres scurried around for a one out triple, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Rob Johnson. That's all the runs the Mets would score, and that's all they would need.

Scott Hairston was never given much of a chance to contribute with the Diamondbacks, and if you look at him as an everyday player then that's probably for the best. But he's ridiculously good against left-handed pitchers, as he showed tonight. He went 3 for 4, with 2 doubles and 2 RBIs. Of course, in the 8th he finally saw a righty and then struck out.

If this were hockey Hairston would only qualify for runner-up to star of the night. The top banana honor, unfortunately, has to be handed to Matt Harvey, the rookie pitcher from University of North Carolina who punched out 11 Diamondbacks in his major league debut, and all in 5 1/3 innings. He did give up 3 walks and 3 hits, but like I already said, he more than limited the damage with his ridiculous mix of a 98 mph fastball, and an 86 mph off speed. Hard to hit that if the pitcher can control them, and Harvey controlled them.

Wade Miley was decent, but not great. He went 5 1/3 innings, gave up 3 runs on 9 hits and no walks. Unfortunately, he only managed 3 strikeouts, so the Mets were putting the ball into play quite a bit and reaping the lucky awards. The bullpen, however, was fantastic. They finished the game without giving up a hit, and only allowed 1 baserunner off a walk.

The Diamondbacks would finally get on the board in the 8th inning after Jason Kubel drew a one out walk. He advanced to third with a Paul Goldschmidt triple, and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Justin Upton. Although the Diamondbacks would threaten again in the 9th with two outs and two on by walks, they also would strike out for the side, a distasteful end for a distasteful game.

Batman: Brad Ziegler (2.6%)

Harvey Dent: Mike Zagurski (2.2%), David Hernandez (1.9%), Takashi Saito (1.6%)

Two-Face: Wade Miley (-9.6%)

Scary-Face: The entire D-backs offense, which all had a negative WPA

Over 700 comments in the Gameday Thread, overall it was a quiet affair as we were lulled in to submission by all the strikeouts. Clefo took poll, though no one had over 100 comments. He was joined by: AzDbackfanInDc, snakecharmer, onedotfive, soco, 4 Corners Fan, hotclaws, blank_38, MarinerHousewife, dbacks4life, porty99, Zavada's Moustache, rd33, jjwaltrip, kishi, asteroid, Jim McLennan, egboyz, Baseballdad, Britback, xmet, txzona, BattleMoses, Rockkstarr12, Tucson d-back fan, DbackCardsFan, luckycc, Bcawz, JoeCB1991, Muu, Fangdango, $-The Moneyman-$, and DivineWolfwood.

Comment of the day goes to $-The Moneyman-$, who continued the Grand Snakepit Tradition of promising ridiculous things to players in exchange for offensive production:

I now owe Paul Golschmidt one kingdom.

-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.

by $-The Moneyman-$ on Jul 27, 2012 12:24 AM EDT up reply actions 2 recs

I'd like to forget this game ever happened. Anyone have one of those zappy memory things from Men in Black? The series has just begun against the Mets, so here's hoping that things get better from here. Tomorrow is another 6:40pm start, so be here or somewhere else.