Diamondbacks 7, Dodgers 9: Battle of the bad bullpens

Record: 42-61. Pace: 66-96. Chance on 2015: -9,

The seventh inning of this game was a microcosm of the entire season. In fact, it lasted about as long as the entire season. Due to work, a post-work function (bye, Jenna!) and a satellite outage, I only saw about 45 minutes of this game, during that seventh inning which had all the brevity of a 19th-century Russian novel. Over this three-quarters of an hour, I saw precisely two outs. As a whole, the two halves of the frame lasted an hour and twelve minutes, during which time the sides combine for 12 runs on 11 hits and four walks, using eight different pitchers to throw 91 pitches. 21 batters came to the plate, as both sides batted around.

You don’t see that every day.

Nor would you want to.

Some stuff happened before that seventh inning, though nothing that could be seen to portend the immense epic disaster which would unfold. Zack Godley was about what you would expect from your #5 starter. He gave the team the very minimal definition of a quality start, going exactly six innings, and allowing precisely three earned run. That’s probably more than you’d expect from a 1.00 WHIP, as he only gave up four hits and two walks. It was mostly poor clustering: five of those six base-runners came in the second and fourth innings, where Los Angeles scored all their runs. If he had spread them out a bit better, this would have been a very good start.

However, the genuine article was being delivered for the home team by Kenta Maeda, who held the Diamondbacks entirely off the board through the first six innings. Arizona managed two base-runners to that point: a single by Paul Goldschmidt in the first, and a double from Jake Lamb in the fourth. Both were with two outs, and so didn’t go anywhere. Goldschmidt then led off the seventh with a single, and one out later, Welington Castillo doubled him home, to get Arizona on the board and also end Maeda’s night. For the record, here are the combined lines for the starters and bullpens this evening:

Starters: 12.1 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 9 SO
Bullpens: 4.2 IP, 11 H, 11 ER, 5 BB, 4 SO

Which brings us to the rest of the seventh. At first it was glorious. Enter Dodgers reliever #1. Brandon Drury walked. Exit Dodgers reliever #1. Enter Dodgers reliever #2. Yasmany Tomas blooped the bases loaded. Chris Owings blooped home a run. Rickie Weeks Jr walked a run in, tying things up. Jean Segura struck out. Exit Dodgers reliever #2. Enter Dodgers reliever #3. Michael Bourn legged out the weakest go-ahead RBI single in the history of baseball. Exit Dodgers reliever #3. Enter Dodgers reliever #4. Goldschmidt lined one down into the left-field corner emptying the bases with his second hit of the inning. Even though Lamb flew out, Arizona were 7-3 up, and I could head home from Tempe happy.

The happiness didn’t even last to downtown Phoenix. I’m sorry to say this, but Daniel Hudson is simply broken. He faced three batters tonight, and they all scored, as he went single, home-run walk. Since June 23, he has allowed 23 earned runs in eight innings of work. Twenty-three. Even including the first 30 games, his ERA for the season is now 6.81. That’s higher than that of the human white flag, Dominic Leone. Zack Curtis was no better: two-run homer followed by a double, and Arizona had gone from a four-run lead to putting the go-ahead run on second, in 18 pitches and without retiring a Los Angeles hitter. Randall Delgado did get the next two outs, but then allowed a single back up the middle, and the Dodgers had taken the lead back, batting around with a five-run seventh inning.

The rest was more or less inevitable. Welington Castillo singled to lead off the eighth, only for Brandon Drury to hit into a double-play, and that was Arizona’s last base-runner. Chip Hale ran Leone out there in the eighth, and he allowed his compulsory run, not that it made any difference. Goldschmidt ended the night with three hits and three RBI and Castillo picked up a couple of hits, but the disaster which was the seventh exposed once again the weakness that was the bullpen, Hale’s refusal to contemplate using his best relief pitchers when the game is on the line (where was Tyler Clippard?), and Mike Butcher’s apparent inability to do anything.

Here’s the Fangraph. Vomit receptacles sold separately.

AzDbackfanInDc, MichaelMcD831993 and Hazzard21 led the way in the comments, with others present being: Airwave, Augdogs, Azreous, CardsRepInChile, Gilbertsportsfan, GuruB, Jackwriter, James Attwood, Jim McLennan, JoeCB1991, Lamar Jimmerson, Makakilo, MrMrrbi, Oldenschoole, SongBird, coldblueAZ, datr22, edbigghead, hotclaws, lg451, noblevillain and since_98. Comment of the thread to Joe

I think a lot of us want both gone

But we would rather see Butcher go if given a choice

Cards/Bears/Suns/D-Backs/Yotes/Sun Devils

Carson Palmer, he goes long

by JoeCB1991 on Jul 29, 2016 | 10:02 PM up reply rec (3) flag actions

It’s back at it again in Dodger Stadium tomorrow night, with Braden Shipley making his second career start. We’ll see how that goes. If it’s anything like tonight, his performance won’t matter.