Diamondbacks 3, Nationals 1: Bronson Arroyo, Ace Pitcher

The story tonight was definitely the pitching. To start the game off, both pitchers threw 1-2-3 first innings, and Bronson Arroyo got two strike outs in the top of the inning. As Candiotti, I think it was, pointed out on the radio, it was slightly ironic that soft-tossing Arroyo got the strike outs, and hard-throwing Stephen Strasburg got two soft ground outs in the inning.

Arroyo had his worst result in the second inning. He gave up a lead off single Wilson Ramos, which was promptly followed up by a triple to Ian Desmond to score a run. However, that was all that inning, despite a walk to Tyler Moore, thanks to another strikeout and an inning-ending double play. 

That was basically it as far as Arroyo was concerened. After that he effectively shut down the Nationals for the next seven innings. He hit a rough patch in the fifth inning where he had runners at first and third with only one out, but got out of that with an ground ball back to the mound and his fifth strike out of the night. Including the first, he sat down the side in order five times and recorded seven strike outs, and pitched the complete game. 

Meanwhile, the Dbacks offense was only doing marginally better than the Nats, but it was enough. In the third inning, Miguel Montero scored Paul Goldschmidt with an RBI double to tie the game at one, and then in the fourth, Paul Goldschmidt hit his own RBI double to score Bronson Arroyo, who had two singles on the night, and Martin Prado to give the Dbacks a 3-1 lead, which would turn out to be the difference.

Really, though, enough can not be said about Arroyo, tonight and so far in the month of May in general. He's pitched 23.1 innings, finally pitching the 7+ a game we were promised, but not only that, he's also only give up two runs, for an ERA of 0.39. At that rate, it would take him just a tick over three games to give up  one earned run, which actually works out, since tonight was his third game this month, and also had his first earned run. Just crazy. He can't keep this up forever, and, in my opinion, still isn't a good bet for the contract we gave him, but even if he can do half this well for the rest of the season, I'll be more than pleased.

<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=0&type=livewins&num=0&h=450&w=450&date=2014-05-13&team=Diamondbacks&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="450" width = "450" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?date=2014-05-13&team=Diamondbacks&dh=0&season=2014">FanGraphs</a></span>

Epic: Bronson Arroyo, 40.3%

Also Epic: Paul Goldschmidt, 29.2%

Less Than Epic: Geraldo Parra, -10.6%

A fairly subdued Gameday Thread tonight, with only 321 comments at post time. DbacksSkins had the most with 80 and double the amount of asteroid in second and at the game, with yours truly rounding out the top three. All present were:

Clefo, DbacksSkins, DeadmanG, Diamondhacks, Fangdango, GODSCHMIDT, GuruB, JoeCB1991, Makakilo, Ross Dunham, asteroid, azshadowwalker, cheese1213, cole8865, hotclaws, imstillhungry95, onedotfive, preston.salisbury, soco

Comment of the night would also go to DbacksSkins for perfectly summing up the Dbacks season so far in one comment, but that seems a little depressing for a win, so there isn't a CotN. Sorry. 

Join us tomorrow for a 12:40 P.M. Arizona time start that will be radio only for those of us not lucky enough to escape the archaic blackout rules.