The last Diamondbacks pitcher to homer was Wade Miley, who did so on April 22, 2013. Impressively, it was at AT&T Park, and a night game there no less. Leading off the fifth inning, he took a 2-0 pitch from Ryan Vogelsong deep to right-field, breaking a 2-2 tie, though the Giants would win the game 5-4. Since then? 504 games. 1,045 plate-appearances. 918 at-bats. And not a single home-run for our pitchers. Every other team in the National League has had their hurlers deliver at least one home-run since - the Giants have had fourteen. Hell, two AMERICAN League teams (the Rays and Tigers) have had a pitcher homer since the Diamondbacks last did.
I think someone needs to splice that into The Natural! All told, there have been 64 such home-runs in 63 games (Syndergaard double-dipping, earlier this week). That's excluding the one hit by Alexei Ramirez of the White Sox in Sep. 2015, because he started the game at shortstop. But I am including the home-run hit by the Cubs' David Ross on July 26, 2015, because he came into the game as a pitcher, worked a perfect top of the ninth, and then homered to lead off the bottom of the ninth, without playing any other position that day. Here are the numbers of home-runs hit by the other current National League sides since the D-backs last one, along with the date and provider of their most-recent blast.
- Atlanta (4) - Mike Minor, 7/12/14
- Chicago (13) - Jake Arrieta, 4/10/16
- Cincinnati (3) - Mike Leake, 4/30/15
- Colorado (4) - Kyle Kendrick, 9/7/15
- Los Angeles (4) - Kenta Maeda, 4/6/16
- Miami (3) - Jose Fernandez, 07/02/15
- Milwaukee (1) - Yovani Gallardo, 04/29/13
- New York (5) - Noah Syndergaard, 05/11/16
- Philadelphia (1) - Chad Billingsley, 05/10/15
- Pittsburgh (3) - Francisco Liriano, 08/08/15
- San Diego (4) - Tyson Ross, 07/02/15
- San Francisco (14) - Madison Bumgarner, 04/09/16
- St. Louis (2) - Adam Wainwright, 05/02/16
- Washington (1) - Gio Gonzalez, 04/02/14
Adding insult to injury, nine different pitchers have homered against the Diamondbacks since Miley went deep, including two Giants, two Rockies and two Cubs - Jake Arrieta being the most recent, doing so on April 10th this year. These have included a grand-slam in 2014, by Madison Bumgarner, something never achieved by a pitcher on our side.
However, this may be our year, and you won't be surprised to hear this largely because of the presence in our rotation of Zack Greinke. He was responsible for the Dodgers' other three home-runs, and as we saw in his last start, can certainly handle the bat rather well. He sports a career .227 batting average, and seems to enjoy hitting at Chase (.306/.359/.444 here for an .803 OPS, higher than Miguel Montero and Chris Young!) But if you fancy another, you might want to take a look at Patrick Corbin, who is sporting a cool .765 OPS this season. More than one-third of his 20 career hits have gone for extra bases, with five doubles and a pair of triples, so if he gets into one with a bit of elevation, who knows?