Game #9 Preview: 4/15, Arizona Diamondbacks @ San Diego Padres

Chase Anderson RHP, 0-0, 5.40

Brandon Morrow RHP, 0-0, 0.00

Ender Inciarte - LF	Wil Myers - CF
A.J. Pollock - CF	Derek Norris - C
Paul Goldschmidt - 1B	Matt Kemp - RF
Mark Trumbo - RF	Justin Upton - LF
Jake Lamb - 3B	Yonder Alonso - 1B
Aaron Hill - 2B	Will Middlebrooks - 3B
Jordan Pacheco - C	Jedd Gyorko - 2B
Nick Ahmed - SS	Alexi Amarista - SS
Chase Anderson - RHP	Brandon Morrow - RHP

Yeah, kinda crappy day in history. Tax day, the sinking of the Titanic, the Hillsborough disaster, the Boston marathon bombing...  We don't have a winning record either, the Diamondbacks having gone 6-8 on this date in history. On the plus side. happy birthday to Anya Stark, a.k.a Maisie Williams, so here's to Arizona sticking it to San Diego with the pointy end this evening. And, of course, it's the anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut, so all across baseball, players will be wearing #42 today, to mark the way he helped changed the landscape of baseball forever.

No place for Tomas in tonight's starting line-up, so we still await his first appearance in the major leagues. I'm still thoroughly confused by the decision to promote him, since it's not even as if he was destroying AAA pitching, hitting .190/.261/.381. Small sample size, to be sure, but the question remains: what had changed in those five games? Here's a thought: perhaps the "personal matter" that caused Tomas to miss the first game of the Aces season, was something known about at that point, and would also have taken him away from the major-league roster? No point playing a man short, so "not enough playing time" was just a convenient excuse. This, I stress, is just speculation.

We'll see if the offense can be more productive this evening than against the extremely soft-tossing Despiagne last night. We have faced Brandon Morrow, but that was effectively meaningless, since it was close to five years ago, when he was with the Blue Jays. None of the Arizona players who appeared that day are anywhere in the organization. Cliff Pennington is the only hitter with even a handful of PAs, but again, those mostly date back a while, to when he was with Oakland. Since the end of 2010, Penny's 0-for-1 with a pair of walks. Anderson started three times vs. the Padres last year, and is 2-1 with a 3.27 ERA, pitching exactly five innings each time.