Diamondbacks 2, Giants 3: Not so pretty in purple

I've always loved the purple jerseys. Granted, that's likely because they still hold that bit of nostalgia from the team's inception, and if the organization had switched from the Sedona Red to the... Phoenix Sun Purple, we'd likely wish the new color off into the cornfield. Either way, the Diamondbacks had that purple on tonight as Wade Miley looked to bounce back from a few poor starts and pick up a win. He accomplished half of those tasks; unfortunately, it didn't lead to a team victory. He pitched "fine". He was not incredible, nor awful. He pitched fine, yet Barry Zito held our offense to one run over his six and two-thirds innings. That's... not really an effective way to play a game of baseball.

Hit the jump for the details.

Just three pitches into the game and San Francisco already had a man in scoring position, courtesy of a triple off the bat of Angel Pagan. Miley settled down, inducing a groundball from Marco Scutaro -- scoring a run -- before garnering outs from Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence, with a double from Buster Posey sandwiched between. The hard-hit balls early on certainly looked to be harbingers of doom and despair, but the game played out much smoother than we probably could have expected given recent performances from Wade.

Miley wasn't quite dominant, though, as two singles and Wade's sole walk of the night led to a bases-loaded, two-out situation. With firm resolve (ok, it was one batter, Joaquin Arias), the Diamondbacks returned to the dugout with the scoreboard still reading 1-0 in favor of the Giants. Clearly discontent, however, was Justin Upton, who crushed his fourteenth home run of the season in the fourth inning. Maybe, just maybe, we'd cracked the unsolvable enigma that is Barry Zito's contract.

Well, not really. The Diamondbacks continued to struggle against Zito, who exited with two outs in the sixth with just one earned run. This fact was made worse when compounded with Buster Posey's two-run shot just two innings prior, which had given the Giants a 3-1 lead. When Zito left, he had just four strikeouts to go with one walk (mirroring Miley in the two departments) with six hits. Regardless, all that mattered was the one run allowed. You can really only ask so much of your rookie pitcher. :(

Arizona was able to add another run in the eighth on an RBI single from Paul Goldschmidt, but it served to do little more than make the ninth inning a more exciting one-run affair. And, in all honesty, the ninth inning was exciting, just probably for the wrong reasons. Miguel Montero opened up the bottom half of the inning with a single, and was subsequently pinch-ran for by Tyler Graham. For some reason (and please, enlighten me, unless all you have is "but then he's one base further!!111!!!!"), Graham tried to steal second, an endeavor that would be acceptable in the ninth only if the team were down by ten runs. A spot-on throw nailed Graham at second, and a strikeout/groundout ended the inning and game, 3-2 in favor of the Giants. Boo baserunning. Actually, boo bad baserunning. On the positive side, our bullpen didn't allow any runs. But let me stew in my bitterness.

Source: FanGraphs

Good: Miguel Montero, +21.7%
Bad: Tyler Graham, -22.0%
Zito's Contract: Chris Johnson, -26.6%

Three strikeouts, a GIDP, and a throwing error from Johnson tonight. Rock on. We tallied over 500 comments tonight (not bad for this point in the season), with imstillhungry95 standing as the only poster with triple-digits at 113. asteroid took second with 73. Joining the two tonight were onedotfive, JoeCB1991, AzDbackfanInDc, SongBird, aricat, justin1985, snakecharmer, soco, shoewizard, dbacks79, GuruB, xmet, Jim McLennan, azwebber, hotclaws, Clefo, piratedan7, Marc Fournier, and dbacks4life.

Comment of the Night goes to shoewizard, whose comment led the pack with three recs:

Wait.....

Isn’t THIS this exhibition game ? Quick, somebody tell the D Backs this isn’t the Alumni game, this game COUNTS !

WCE# 14

by shoewizard on Sep 15, 2012 5:53 PM PDT 3 recs

It's a 1:10 start tomorrow, when Patrick Corbin will try and take a game against Ryan Vogelsong. I gotta admit, the idea of winning the division the wildcard the series not getting swept sounds pretty sweet right now.

So, that's it for me this season. Tomorrow, I get to grab whatever I'm forgetting to pack, then on Monday I'm off to the mystical lands of Klamath Falls, Oregon for college. Hurrah.