Snake Bytes, 4/7: The morning after the Opening Day before

Recaps

[Arizona Sports]: Diamondbacks drop season opener to Giants - "I told the guys after the game," first-year manager Chip Hale said, "one thing we know we're not going to be undefeated, and the other thing is we still have a chance to win the series (with the Giants). You win series, you win championships, so we have to battle these next two games. They showed a lot of fight. It was great to come back."

[FOX Sports] D-backs' late charge not quite enough in opener - "I wasn't as fine as I wanted to be," Collmenter said. "If I am going to be successful, I have to throw fastballs where I want them. I was more all over the place than I would like to be. I got behind in some counts and they were able to put the bat on some pitches. Sometimes they blooped them in. Sometimes they hit them well. I didn't keep them off-balance enough."

[dbacks.com] Control woes catch up to Collmenter in fifth inning - "He battled," Hale said of Collmenter. "He just got to the point where he was at 89 pitches. It didn't seem like he had a whole lot left. But Colly did a good job to limit the damage up until then. It's too bad. Those are his runners out there. You hate to have to take him out. He battled so much. Four and two-thirds and to throw 89 pitches is a lot."

[AZ Central] Bumgarner drops Diamondbacks in opener - The Diamondbacks' fate might have been different if not for one borderline pitch in the fifth Catcher Tuffy Gosewisch set up away and Collmenter hit his spot with a 78 mph change-up. After he caught it, Gosewisch held it in place for an extra half-second, waiting for Gary Cederstrom's call. Ball Two, Cederstrom said. "It was very close," Gosewisch said. "I think that last McGehee at-bat against Colly was probably a pivotal at-bat in the game. If we minimize there and get him out, then we score those three runs in the eighth and now we're ahead."

Lamb chops

[dbacks.com] 'Bummed' at not starting, Lamb delivers off bench - Lamb said, "I was a little frustrated, but I just like playing. So it's not like I was mad at [Hale] or mad at anybody else, I was just a little bummed. I just wanted to get in the game. So I got in the game and I got some runs for the team, and that's all I can do. And that's the way I like it," Lamb said. "I don't want them to say four hitters away; I would rather they just say, 'Hey, you're up,' and that's what they did. It doesn't give you any time to think. You just go up and hit."

[FOX Sports] Jake Lamb tabs big pinch-hit in D-backs Opening Day - Lamb gave his locker room neighbor, catcher Jordan Pacheco, a little credit for coaching him through a relatively unexpected spot. "He's one of the best I've seen at it," Lamb said of pinch hitting. "He just says, 'Got to be aggressive early in the count.' They like to throw fastballs. You can't miss those pitches. (I) took an aggressive hack at the first one, told myself he's probably coming with fastball again, so put a good swing on it."

[AZ Central] Diamondbacks have it both ways with third basemen Hill and Lamb - [Hill's] role isn't going to change long-term, but there was still something special about getting the call to open the season for Hill. He felt it was a sign of respect from his manager for the years he's put into the game. "This game doesn't owe anybody anything," he said. "But that respect goes a long way. You feel like when the skipper and the guys give you the head nod, it's really neat. He could have gone with Jake, or anybody."

Team News

[Arizona Sports] La Russa: Yasmany Tomas could hit big league pitching right now - "He's much better served getting everyday at-bats," La Russa said. "But we expect that he's going to go to Triple-A and do real well, and you always have a problem, and he'll be in better playing shape, with timing and everything else if he's out there getting at bats. But the P.S. to that is we've got ourselves a guy that's going to be a productive Major League hitter in a big way."

[FOX Sports] Aaron Hill's 10th Opening Day has unusual feel - "My family and I have been very happy here. Yes, selfishly, I want to play every day, of course. In a perfect world, I would love to play every day, just to tell them I can do it again. There is no such thing as a perfect scenario, but this is pretty darn close. My family is here. My kids are in school here. "It is what it is, and we're in situation where we have a lot of good young guys. It's a great team, so I have a blast coming to the field with these guys. It was tough in spring thinking about this. I'm sure the situation (for more playing time) will present itself at some point during the season."

[KTAR[ Discount-backs: Arizona offers cheapest game day in baseball - The Team Marketing Report, for the ninth-straight year, said the D-backs have the lowest fan cost in MLB at $126.89 for a family of four, about $85 less than the average of $211.68. "It's shocking to know that, of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, we (the Phoenix area) have the lowest per capita income of all of those teams, so we keep that in mind," Derrick Hall said. "We have plenty of people who can afford to come here but for those who can't, we want them to come here and say, ‘Hey, that was a great experience, and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg.'"

[Arizona Sports] Tuffy Gosewisch sees 'dream come true' in Opening Day start for D-backs - [Chase Anderson ] described Gosewisch Monday as "a guy that really cares about his pitcher... The care he has for his pitching staff and his pitchers is second to none... They call it the battery, right? He gets mad when you throw a bad pitch, too. Not just you, you know? He just cares about you. When you do good, he praises you. You need to be picked up a little? He picks you up."

[Arizona Sports] Diamondbacks acquire Braves prospect Victor Reyes - As part of the trade that sent Trevor Cahill to Atlanta, the Arizona Diamondbacks have acquired outfielder Victor Reyes from the Braves. Dave Stewart announced Monday that the acquisition will cost Arizona its Competitive Balance Round B No. 75 pick. The 20-year-old hit .259 with 13 doubles and 34 RBI in 89 games last year and was named to the South Atlantic League midseason All-Star Team. He joined the Braves system in 2011 when he signed as a non-drafted free agent from Venezuela.

Teams that had a worse Opening Day than us

[Chicago Sun-Times] Cubs apologize for broken bathrooms, will add portable bathrooms - [Ah, never change, Cubs...] Griping targeted the Ricketts family. "Things were getting heated," Fitzell said. "People were saying, ‘The Rickets spent all this money on the Jumbotron, but can we get some more facilities instead of a bigger scoreboard?’"

[NY Times] Rain Makes Mess of Marlins Opener as They Lose to Braves 2-1 - Even before Dee Gordon went face down leaving the batter's box, the Miami Marlins looked like a flop in their season opener against the Atlanta Braves. The sellout crowd's mood soured in the second inning when the game was halted for 16 minutes because of rain — a first at 3-year-old Marlins Park, which has a retractable roof. The resulting wet track subsequently cost the Marlins at least twice on the bases, and they lost to Atlanta 2-1.

[Green Bay Press-Gazette] Braun injury tops off ugly Brewers opener - If their Opening Day performance is any indication, it could be a long year for the Milwaukee Brewers. It was just the first of 162 games, but Monday could not have gone much worse. Kyle Lohse was hit hard to the tune of eight runs on 10 hits over 3 1/3 innings, Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy combined to go 0-for 8 with three strikeouts, and the team even added three errors and two wild pitches throughout a sloppy game defensively. As if that weren't enough, Ryan Braun topped it off with an 0-for-2 day and an early exit after the fifth inning due to a strained lower right side.

And, elsewhere...

[NYTimes.com] As Baseball Returns for Opening Day, Runs Don’t Follow - Here are the runs scored by the losing teams in Monday’s openers (as well as the single game Sunday night): 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. Four of the losing teams were limited to three hits, and the Rangers managed just one hit against Sonny Gray (19 career wins) and Evan Scribner (one career save) of the Athletics. Even with some of the winning teams showing offensive muscle — the Rockies and the Royals scored 10 runs each, the A’s and the Red Sox eight — the teams scored an average of just 3.27 runs on opening day this year.

Perhaps that played into the increased pace of games on Opening Day - though you would be forgiven for not noticing it at Chase, where last night's contest took a languid 3:18. I think an hour of that was in the bottom of the eighth, which took Bruce Bochy four pitchers to negotiate. But overall:

Average time of 2015 openers was 2:49, down 15 minutes from last year's openers and 19 minutes from the season average last year.

— Phil Rogers (@philgrogers) April 7, 2015

[DRaysBay] The night is dark and full of errors: MLB teams as Game of Thrones characters - "Baseball is here and winter is coming...but when the dust settles on 2015, who will sit on MLB's Iron Throne?" We are Ramsay Bolton. Who's he, you might ask? "Ramsay Snow used to simply be known as the Bastard of Bolton; a crazy, psychopathic flayer who associated with mongrels and savages." Welp. This will end well...