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Cactus League record: 14-11-2.
Jeremy Hellickson was today's starter, having been skipped his previous scheduled turn due to a tired arm. There doesn't appear to be any serious concern from the team. and he threw 75 pitches today, so seems on track for 90-100 or so in his final warm-up next week. Though today, they weren't all that brilliant pitches: he was tagged for eight hits and a walk over 4.1 innings, with three strikeouts and three earned runs resulting. He was lifted with two on and one out in the fifth, and Andrew Chafin relieved Hellickson, giving up an RBI single, before getting out of the jam with a double-play.
After a hitless sixth, Robbie Ray may have punched his ticket to the minor leagues with a five-run seventh that included a walk and five hits, three of them for extra bases. With a spring ERA of 7.71 and seven walks in 14 innings, the team appears to have better options, even if this means going with an all right-handed rotation. A.J. Schugel threw a perfect eighth, but Enrique Burgos allowed three hits and two runs in the ninth, though one was unearned due to an error by shortstop Raul Navarro. Burgos did strike out a pair, giving him 14 in 10 spring innings, and certainly has raised his profile this pre-season.
Things looked promising early in the middle innings for Arizona, who struggled against KC's Danny Duffy early, but then came back to lead 5-3 after six innings. A.J. Pollock and Nick Ahmed each had two hits, with Pollock driving in and scoring a pair of runs. Paul Goldschmidt also had two RBI, getting his first home-run of spring to score himself and Pollock in the fourth, tying the game up at two. Pollock then followed with his first bomb an inning later, driving in Ahmed, and Ahmed, who also had a stolen-base, completed the scoring in the sixth, an RBI single that scored Jordan Pacheco.
Tomorrow is another split-squad kinda day, with half the team staying at Salt River to face the Rockies: Daniel Hudson is now the scheduled starter there. The other half will probably already be on their way over the border to Mexico, for an exhibition game in Hermosillo. Not sure who's starting that one.