Diamondbacks 2, Nationals 3: Weaker Than Natty Light

Record: 41-36. Pace: 86-76. Change over last year: +2.

Is it too much to ask for everything?

Tonight the Diamondbacks had another one of their trademark mismatched games, where the offense largely ran and hid, yet the pitching was good enough to imagine what might have been. Okay, so maybe the D-backs don't have the monopoly on this, it just seems like they're better at it.

The top of the 1st inning gave me thoughts of world domination. Aaron Hill took a walk from the stingy Jordan Zimmermann, who has given up only 15 for the season going into the game. That's good enough for 4th overall of qualified pitchers in all of baseball. Then Paul Goldschmidt did his Goldschmidt thing and smacked a double near the right field corner. Martin Prado brought him home to give Arizona two runs for the innings, and not only was I not fantasizing about trading Prado for a Whataburger with cheese, but wondering if the D-backs could be approaching cruising altitude.

The short answer is no. Wade Miley gave up a singular run in three separate innings, and although he looked close to teetering over the edge at times, he kept the D-backs in the game. His end line was 7 innings pitched, 7 hits and 1 walk, 2 earned runs. It wasn't Miley we had to be worried about tonight, though.

Where did offense go? After working Zimmermann 30 pitches in the first, the Snakes had little success. 2 hits in the first inning, 2 hits in the 8 that followed. Only thrice did they get a guy in scoring position. If there's a small consolation, I suppose it's that they only struck out 5 times, but given that the team was built partially to avoid striking out, that isn't much of a prize. And of course, Prado grounded into a double play.

Josh Collmenter made an appearance, probably only a test of the algorithm that runs the D-backs random encounters system. He used Spirit attack, and was super effective.

It's hard to find much else to write about this game. I guess the only thing to do is look forward to tomorrow, where the D-backs will look to avoid a sweep. Not a must-win, but boy, do I want it.

All I want is everything.

That graph about sums it up. Half of the game it felt like things were at least in our favor, then slowly sliding into the darkness. 477 comments in the Gameday Thread, which is a number between 1 and 478, and can hold whatever symbolic desire that we want to give it. Clefo was grand champion of commenting with 57, and he was argumentative with: AzDbackfanInDc, AzRattler, Baseballdad, Dallas D'Back Fan, Diamondhacks, Fangdango, Gildo, GuruB, Jim McLennan, JoeCB1991, KaileyCyrus, Rockkstarr12, SenSurround, Zavada's Moustache, asteroid, azshadowwalker, baby pa, blank_38, hotclaws, imstillhungry95, onedotfive, preston.salisbury, rd33, since_98, soco, and xmet.

Like I said before, tomorrow the D-backs play the Natinals, but this time there's a twist! What is it, you ask? Well, the start time is at 1:05pm, Arizona time. Patrick Corbin faces off against the Kwisatz Haderach of our time, Stephen Strasburg, but you can bet it doesn't matter how well Corbin does. He's going to get screwed again, because that's how the world works.