Diamondbacks 7, Royals 4: Pyrrhic victory

According to WIkipedia, a Pyrrhic victory is "a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way. However, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit." It's named after king Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC, after which he allegedly said, "Another such victory and I am undone." Never say the SnakePit is not educational. But I'm tempted to edit the Wikipedia page, and insert a picture of tonight's game. For we won, but at a terrible cost.

For, as already noted, this warm-up victory cost us the services of All-Star outfielder A.J. Pollock for an indeterminate period. He fractured his elbow after sliding across home-plate in the third inning: dammit, don't you realize the phrase is supposed to be "meaningless exhibition game"? Oh, well. There is absolutely no point in histrionics; so let there be no weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth or rending of garments. It is what it is, and everyone has to carry on. To quote Brad Ziegler: "This team will come together and persevere - that's what family does in tough times." Damn right. And in Socrates Brito we trust...

As for the rest of the game... Rubby De La Rosa had his struggles early, and his mistakes tended to get clobbered pretty hard. But he got through five innings of three-run ball, scattering six hits and two walks with a pair of strikeouts, as he threw a total of 75 pitches. Tyler Clippard tossed a scoreless sixth, and two candidates for the remaining bullpen spots, Enrique Burgos and Jake Barrett, both faced the minimum: edge to Burgos, perhaps, with two strikeouts to Barrett's zero. Daniel Hudson allowed a run on three two-out hits in the ninth, Socrates Brito just coming up short on a diving attempt for the first of these. Of such things...

The offense continued their ongoing spring tacos assault, with 12 hits. There were two apiece for Brito, Pail Goldschmidt and Rickie Weeks Jr, whose roster chances likely took a sharp uptick over the past few hours. Jake Lamb had a walk and a hit, but Jean Segura went 0-for-5 and his batting average drooed below .500 for the first time this year. Indeed, it's only the second time all spring he has gone ohfer, the other time being an 0-for-2 with a walk on March 21. Maybe we just need to move all the Diamondbacks games this season back to Salt River Fields... Nick Ahmed had his second home-run, while Goldschmidt and Brito stole bases.

The final preseason game takes place tomorrow afternoon at Chase with an early start - 12:10pm first pitch. Robbie Ray will start for the D-backs, but expect a lot of minor-leaguers, particularly for KC, since they'll be resting their regulars for the season opener on Sunday night. Let's just hope Arizona can negotiate their way through it, without any more damage.