Arizona Diamondbacks Game Preview, #51: Slapped silly

Cesar Vargas RHP, 0-2, 3.34

Zack Greinke RHP, 5-3, 4.59

Jon Jay - CF	Jean Segura - 2B
Wil Myers - 1B	Michael Bourn - RF
Matt Kemp - RF	Paul Goldschmidt - 1B
Yangervis Solarte - 2B	Jake Lamb - 3B
Melvin Upton Jr. - LF	Welington Castillo - C
Brett Wallace - 3B	Brandon Drury - LF
Derek Norris - C	Chris Owings - CF
Alexei Ramirez - SS	Zack Greinke - RHP
Cesar Vargas - RHP	Nick Ahmed - SS

To see if I could get some kind of clue, I looked at the 18 blow-out losses suffered by the 2015 Diamondbacks, defining "blow-out" as the margin of defeat being five runs or more. The team actually better than average after such losses, going 10-8. Interestingly, regardless of result, most of the games the following day were close: seven of the ten victories and five of eight defeats (so, two-thirds of all games after a blow-out defeat) being by two runs or fewer. Overall, the team scored 83 runs and conceded 81. That's 4.61 per game scored, compared to an average last year of 4.44, and 4.50 conceded (4.40 average).

Thus, if tonight's contest follows suit, we should probably see the Diamondbacks win, but it's going to be fairly close, in a slightly-more offensive-minded contest than normal. Of course, that average prediction conceals a great deal of range in the actual 2015 post-blowout results. Our best performance was at Chase against the Nationals: we were destroyed 11-1 in the series opener by Max Scherzer, but came back with a blowout of our own, crusing Stephen Strasburg 14-6 the following night. On the other hand at the beginning of September, we went down 4-9 in Coors Field, flew to Wrigley and got caned even worse by the Cubs, 14-5. So, who knows!

Getting this up early, as we're off to a graduation party for two of our grandkids. Damn, I feel old. Fortunately, they're not actual blood grand-kids, but children of Mrs. SnakePit's first husband, by his first wife, already in existence before I showed up. We will, however, be heading home sharpish, as Mrs. SnakePit, in a moment of folly, said she wanted to do a guest recap. This won't involve her doing any actual typing, however, as I'll be doing the transcribing as she complains about players not running hard enough to first. I'm just speculating there, but I'd be more surprised if that didn't raise its head tonight! The D-backs had better play well, if they know what's good for them...

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