AZ 4, ATL 7: While You Read This, The Diamondbacks Pitchers Probably Loaded the Bases

The Braves wasted no time in getting to Archie Bradley early tonight. Ender Inciarte grounded out on the first pitch of the game(We won the trade!), but after that, Adonis Garcia singled and Freddie Freeman walked. Matt Kemp struck out for the second out. Nick Markakais singled to bring home Garcia and score the first run, also sending Freeman to second. This brought Tyler Flowers to the plate. He knocked a double, bringing Freeman home, and Markakais to third. Jace Peterson walked, loading the bases for the first time tonight. Dansby Swanson, however, struck out to end the inning (We won the trade again!) 2-0 Barves.

Bradley loaded the bases again in the third, this time with only one out. Flowers was HBP. Peterson and Swanson singled to load the bases (We lost the trade!). Once again, though, Bradley was able to get out of it, this time by getting an ugly strike out from starting pitcher Rob Whalen and then getting Inciarte to ground into a force out (We won the trade!)

The bottom of the third, things started looking better for the Diamondbacks. With two outs, Segura, Bourn, and Goldschmidt all walked to load the bases for themselves. Unlike the Barves up to that point, though, they were able to capitalize. Tomas singled to score Bourn and Segura. Castillo was HBP to load the bases again, and then Lamb hit a ground-rule double to score Goldy and Tomas. 4-2 Dbacks.

In the fourth, Atlanta cut the lead in half. Garcia lead things off with a double. Freeman ground out, moving him to third. Matt Kemp brought him home with a sac fly. 4-3 Dbacks.

Bradley had a 1-2-3 fifth, and that was the end of the night for him.He ended the night with 5 IP, 3 runs, all earned, seven hits, three walks, and seven strikeouts. Randall Delgado and Edwin Escobar followed, both going a scoreless inning each. The latter used the scoreless seventh to bring his ERA to a sterling 10.22 on the season. Fantastic.

Then it all went to hell in a hand basket. Jake Barrett blew the game wide open in the eighth. Swanson singled on the first pitch he saw (We lost the trade!) but then French struck out as a pinch hitter. Inciarte moved Swanson to third (We really lost the trade), but again Barrett got a strike out, this time of Garcia. However, Freeman walked to load the bases yet again, and this time the Braves took advantage. Matt Kemp was up next, and cleared the bases with a double. 6-4 Braves.

That was basically it. Dominic “The Human White Flag III” Leone came in for the ninth and did his thing to make it 7-4.

Don’t @ me.

Over 450 comments tonight, though a quick perusal suggests a decent part of that was the ASU vs. U of A rivalry that is always present. DC lead the way as always with almost 120 comments, and no one else was even close. All present were:

Augdogs, AzDbackfanInDc, Clefo, GuruB, Indedave, JoeCB1991, Makakilo, MichaelMcD831993, MrMrrbi,Oldenschoole, Xerostomia, asteroid, coldblueAZ, gamepass, globaldistrust, hotclaws, noblevillain

The top rec’d comments were both disses on Tuscon/U of A and I don’t have a dog in the fight, so I don’t care. Therefore, no CoTN. 6:40 start time tomorrow. If you don’t have anything better to do, be there.