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Spring Training Gameday Thread #16: 3/16, Diamondbacks vs. Reds

A rare evening contest for Arizona, taking on Cincinnati tonight at Salt River, trying to win their eighth game in a row.

By Jim McLennan
  1. Jean Segura, SS
  2. Socrates Brito, LF
  3. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
  4. David Peralta, RF
  5. Welington Castillo, C
  6. Jake Lamb, 3B
  7. Jason Bourgeois, CF
  8. Patrick Corbin, P
  9. Chris Owings, 2B
    + P (in no particular order) Wesley Wright, Evan Marshall, Enrique Burgos, Sam LeCure and Jake Barrett

Yep: pitcher is batting eighth again. Curious to see if this persists for all the pitchers, or if there is a certain standard of effectiveness with the lumber, that is deemed necessary for you to be put in the #8 spot.

Digging back into the archives to try and find the last time Arizona won seven consecutive Cactus League games, and it has been a while. From what I can see, last season, our best winning streak was four in a row, and in 2014, we never won more than a pair, back-to-back [foreshadowing a year where our best winning run was a feeble three games]. The last time we took more than four, was back in 2010 when we had six straight, from March 11-15 [including a split-squad sweep], and we matched that between March 11-17, 2007. We were unbeaten for eight in 2003 (March 7-14), but that included a tie.

To find a matching streak, the answer may be all the way back in 2002. I say "may", because that streak ended on Sunday March 17, when we played split-squad games, winning one and losing the other, after having won the previous six contests. So, if you count that day's win as happening before the loss, it would be seven in a row from March 12-17. Unfortunately, records are fragmentary, and I can't tell precisely when those two games finished - both took ten innings, so that's no help! But I can say with a fair degree of confidence, it has been at least fifteen years since the Diamondbacks have put together such a winning streak in spring.

Indeed, it has been quite a while since they've won seven in a row anywhere. The last time was August 2011, when they had streaks of seven and nine consecutive victories, on their way to the National League West title, so hopefully, this spring is some kind of an omen. Lots of coverage for this one: it can be seen on Fox Sports Arizona, MLB.TV or the MLB Network, and heard through MLB.com.

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