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You’d be somewhat justified to be a little nervous of the early season road performance by the Diamondbacks so far. Runs had been hard to come by, and this game was no exception, but Robbie Ray and the bullpen did their damndest to make four runs stick.
To start the game off, Ray had a case of the Walksies, and a few four-pitch ones at that. He should wash his hands better and cover his mouth when he coughs. In the 2nd inning, a single, a walk, and an error on a sac bunt loaded the bases. A sac fly scored a run to make it 1-0 Dodgers, but Ray escaped further damage. Ray had a better third inning, which included this fun gem:
just spent the last minute or so watching this in a loop pic.twitter.com/6A40l2s2ap
— Sung Min Kim (@sung_minkim) April 18, 2017
In the 4th Ray gave up a leadoff dinger to Kiké Hernandez to make it Dodgers 2, Diamondbacks 0.
Three consecutive two-out singles by Ray, Pollock, and Peralta tied up the game in the top of the 5th. Ray hunkered down at at one point struck out six straight Dodgers. He lasted 6 innings, the last few of which were dominant. He struck out 10, but walked 4.
Also not sure where to put this, but the Strike Zone was butt. Pure, beefy butt. Unwashed, smelly, and musty butt. It seemed to help the Dodgers more, but there was an occasional butt-like strike or ball call that favored the Diamondbacks. Ultimately, it didn’t decide the game.
Ray gave way to J.J. Hoover, who allowed a leadoff single but then struck out the next three, including giving Corey Seager the Golden Sombrero.
Jake Lamb lead off the 8th and did a bad thing to a baseball.
Game winner. #OurSeason pic.twitter.com/kMnE46boJv
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) April 18, 2017
That made it 3-2. Hoover went out for another inning and after some pantomime defense by Tomas lead to a double by Justin Turner, Hoover got the next three batters to pop up. With two outs in the top half of the 9th David Peralta added an insurance run off of Luis Avilan with a triple that scored Pollock to push the lead to two runs.
Fernando Rodney came in for the save. A loud out by Andrew Toles was followed by a strikeout of Adrian Gonzalez on quite a pretty Change Up then got Joc Pederson to chase a high fastball and the D-Backs left Los Angeles with a split.
Source: FanGraphs
Popeyes: Peralta (+25.1%), Lamb (+24.2%), Hoover (+21.6%)
KFC: Tomas (-12.1%)
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We go a few hours south to San Diego starting tomorrow for a three game set. Tune in! Or don’t, if you’re busy or don’t want to. It’s cool.