Diamondbacks 3, Rockies 2: Goldschmidt Has the Power

Record: 13-9. Pace: 96-66. Change over last year: +2.

Baseball can be a funny game. We spend the first couple weeks getting excited while watching a Diamondbacks team do good work, if not exactly dominate. Then we have a week where we watch them struggle and drop back-to-back series on the road, and open the Giants series with a loss. Then they fight back and get a couple wins to salvage the series and head home for another win.

It just goes to show you can't get too caught up in the day to day in baseball, otherwise you'll go crazy.

Paul Goldschmidt had himself quite a night. First he did it with his glove. In the first inning he turned a dandy of a double play, fielding a sharply hit grounder, getting a toe on first to get the first out, then firing it to second to get the runner. He then followed it up with a great play in the third on a Martin Prado throw that pulled him off the line. He snagged the ball, spun around and in the motion tagged out Troy Tulowitski for the out.

He also did it with his bat. He hit a towering 2 run homer that hit near the top of the left field foul pole to give the Diamondbacks the lead in the 4th.

Trevor Cahill had a decent, if short night. It's hard to argue with the end result of only giving up 1 run, but only going 5 innings is not ideal, especially when you consider how shaky the bullpen has been recently. His final line was 4 hits and 4 walks given up on 6 strikeouts. He kept things in control, though, and might have been hampered from not getting the lower part of the strikezone.

Luckily for Arizona, Josh Collmenter was ready for the call to put in some serious work. He pulled in 3 innings, two of them 3 up, 3 down affairs. He did give up a run in the 7th, but he limited the damage and kept the lead. All in all, exactly what you hope for out of your long reliever.

JJ Putz got the call to close things out, possibly a curious move given his recent troubles. Disaster didn't strike, though, as our beleaguered closer earned the save. He only gave up one walk, and though he labored a bit at times, he was able to make the pitches when needed, and ended the game by striking out Carlos Gonzalez.

Another performance of note is Wil Nieves, who racked up 3 hits in the game. In limited time he's outperformed Miguel Montero, which is more an illustration of how much our starting catcher has been struggling. Still, Nieves has been what you want out of a backup catcher and more.

Gerardo Parra continued his TOOTBLAN ways, getting thrown out for real once, and tempting fate again in the 8th by tagging up to move to first on a fly-out to center. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd really appreciate it if he stopped running like a duck with hot feet.

I'd like to see fewer close games. Obviously, wins are always good no matter how they come, but we also know that close games can often be decided by luck. The Diamondbacks have been in a one run game 10 times already this season. Part of this comes down to the offense just struggling. 3 runs was enough tonight, mainly because of the good pitching, but we can't expect that to be good enough most nights.

Gameday Thread started out pretty active, but quickly petered out. I'm not sure if people just lost energy, or if they switched over to the NFL Draft, or if #blackhelicopters got them. Overall just a pip over 400, with Rockstarr12 taking the pole with 76 comments. She was joined by: AzRattler, Bryn21, Clefo, DbackCardsFan, Diamondhacks, Fangdango, GuruB, Jim McLennan, Lozenge, Paper Clip, RhodeIslandRoxfan, The so-called Beautiful, TolkienBard, Turambar, Zavada's Moustache, asteroid, azshadowwalker, benhat, coldblueAZ, dbacks79, luckycc, porty99, rd33, soco, and txzona.

Tomorrow we're back at with the Rockies. And the day after, and the day after. Tomorrow is the usual 6:40pm start, with Brandon McCarthy facing off against Juan Nicasio. Be here, or be somewhere else.