Diamondbacks 14 , Nationals 6: Revenge is a dish best served the next day

Ruby De La Rosa gave up a lead off single to Denard Span to start things off tonight, but he almost immediately got Yunel Escobar to ground into a 1-4-6-3 double play to erase the runner, and give himself two outs. Jason Werth then grounded out to end the inning, and make this already a better game than last night.

It kept being better than last night in the bottom of the inning, though not right away. Ender Inciarte grounded out, and then Mark Trumbo grounded out for a quick two outs. But then Paul Goldschmidt walked, and David Peralta singled to put two on, two out for Aaron Hill. 2011 Aaron Hill showed up and hit a two RBI double to give us an early lead. Chris Owings then lined out. 2-0 Dbacks

Both pitchers had clean second innings. However, the second inning wasn't a great one for home plate umpire Kerwin Danley. It appeared he took a backswing foul-tip off a Tuffy Gosewich Nick Ahmed swing, to the mask. It visibly shook him up, and he ended having to leave the game. No word on his condition, so hopefully he is doing okay.

Rubby De La Rosa hit a couple bumps in the road starting in the third inning, but nothing really major. He gave up a lead off walk to Danny Espinosa, who was then moved to second by a Steven Strasburg sac bunt. Denard Span then drove him home with a double, to make the score 2-1. That started off a bit of back and forth between the two teams. Ender Inciarte didn't care for the change in the Dbacks lead, and got the run back immediately when he lead off the inning by hitting a solo home run. 3-1 Dbacks. Continuing the give and take, Bryce Harper started the fourth off with a double of his own. That was followed by an RBI double play to bring the Nationals within two again.

They would never be that close again, as the Dbacks put a pounding on them from there on out. Eight Dbacks went to the plate in the fourth, giving Tuffy Gosewich an RBI single, Inciarte a RBI ground out, and Mark Trumbo capped the inning off with a one out grand slam to give the Dbacks an 8-2 lead at the end of the fourth and knock Steven Strasburg out of the game. And they weren't done yet!

They kept it up in the bottom of the fifth inning as well! Hill singled and Owings doubled to start things off. Tuffy then struck out, but Nationals chose to walk Nick Ahmed intentionally to get to De La Rosa and load the bases. Logically, that would probably be a good call. In reality, though, De La Rosa hit an RBI single to score Hill and keep the bases loaded. Significantly, Hill was the ninth Diamondback to score in the game, meaning every one of the starting nine got a run scored. Yeah, I'm okay with that. Inciarte knocked in another run on a sac fly to make the score 10-2. Nick Ahmed then forgot how to run the bases and somehow got thrown out between third and home. Not sure what happened. My feed cut out, and since it didn't affect the outcome of the game, I didn't seek out the video.

But wait! THERE'S STILL MORE! They added four more runs in the sixth to give them a 14-4 lead, after the Nats score two in the top of the inning. Two of the Dbacks runs came courtesy of Mark Trumbo's second home run in as many at bats.

Okay, now they were done. It was more than enough, despite the Nationals giving it a go in the top of the ninth and scoring two to make the final score 14-6, but, really, when it was all said and done, it wasn't even that close.  14-6 was our final, and the Dbacks move back to within two games of .500.

Source: FanGraphs

When it's this sort of blow out, WPA doesn't really tell you much. Hill lead the team with 17%, and everyone else was in the positive to neutral range, with no one getting a negative score. So that's cool

At last check, a pretty healthy GDT, which isn't surprising considering the Dbacks performance tonight. At time of writing, you all were at 605 comments, spread between 27 people. AzDbacksfannDC took the top spot with 74 comments, SongBird in second with three less than him, and Dbacksskins in third with three less than SongBird. All present were:

AzDbackfanInDc, Clefo, DbacksSkins, James Attwood, Jim McLennan, JoeCB1991, Makakilo, MrMrrbi, SongBird, TheGoldenSombrero, Xerostomia, Xipooo, Zavada's Moustache, bbtng, cheese1213, coldblueAZ, ford.williams.10, freeland1787, gamepass, hotclaws, hventure, imstillhungry95, onedotfive, preston.salisbury, shoewizard, soco, xmet

Be here tomorrow for the rubber game of the series. No TV, so you will have to catch it on the radio, or MLB.tv for you out-of-towners. 12:40 start time with Jeremy Hellickson pitching, though, so maybe that isn't a bad thing. NOW GO PROVE ME WRONG, JEREMY!