Arizona Diamondbacks Game Preview, #107: Braced

Tanner Roark RHP, 10-6, 2.96

Robbie Ray LHP, 5-10, 4.70

Trea Turner - 2B	Jean Segura - 2B
Jayson Werth - LF	Michael Bourn - CF
Bryce Harper - RF	Paul Goldschmidt - 1B
Daniel Murphy - 1B	Jake Lamb - 3B
Anthony Rendon - 3B	Welington Castillo - C
Wilson Ramos - C	David Peralta - RF
Chris Heisey - CF	Yasmany Tomas - LF
Danny Espinosa - SS	Chris Owings - SS
Tanner Roark - RHP	Robbie Ray - LHP

After losing consecutive games by 11 and 13 runs, it’s hard to see how tonight’s game could go much worse, short of Paul Goldschmidt stumbling into a wood chipper, carelessly parked in the dugout. Both the runs allowed (28) and the combined margins of defeat (24) were the third worst over any two game span in D-backs history. The record in the former category is 33, set on June 17-18 in - this is my unsurprised face - Coors Field, when Arizona lost to Colorado 14-5 and 19-2. The record margin is 27, dating from August 23-24 2005, when the Diamondbacks were bombed by the Mets 14-1 and 18-4.

I imagine you want to know what has to happen tonight, in terms of records over a three-game span. The most runs conceded by Arizona in three games is 39, which happened, again in Denver, from September 21-23, when the D-backs allowed 15, 11 and 13 runs. So we need eleven tonight to tie the mark. Probably more attainable, the record margin in any trio of contests is 30, adding a 4-1 loss which preceded the other two games against the Mets in 2005. To match that, we need to lose by six tonight at Chase against the Nationals, and that seems well within the scope of possibility, since Arizona already has 13 defeats this year by a margin of 6+ runs.

We’ll see if Robbie Ray can keep racking up the strikeouts. If the team keeps him on every fifth start, and his innings and K’s keep going at the same rate, Ray will end the year with 33 games, 180.2 innings of work and 225 strikeouts. That would be the most for a season since 2004, when Randy Johnson fanned 290. He and Curt Schilling are the only pitchers in team history to have more K’s in a year than Ray’s projected numbers. Indeed, in terms of rate, Ray’s current figure of 11.19 per nine innings, would beat all of Schill’s seasons with Arizona, and trail only the Big Unit, in each season from 1999-2002.