Diamondbacks 0, Padres 1: Padres shutout Diamondbacks

Record: 10-6. Pace: 101-61. Change on 2016: +2.

On a cool night at Petco Park in San Diego a sparse crowd saw the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Diego Padres square off in a pitchers duel. The Padres Erick Aybar homered with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning as San Diego held on for a 1-0 victory over Arizona.

Arizona's lack of offensive power cost Zack Greinke a possible win. The Diamondbacks' ace came out dealing and struck out two in the first and got the first five outs of the game on 15-pitches. He retired ten of the first eleven Padres and allowed two-hits through the first six innings. Ultimately he went surrendered one-run on five-hits and struck out six. The loss dropped his record to 1-2 this season and his lifetime record at Petco Park dropped to 4-2.

His counterpart, Jhoulys Chacin, was more impressive and surrendered just three-hits in eight-innings, while striking out five Arizona batters. The win evened his 2017 record to 2-2. Padres reliever Brandon Maurer closed out Arizona in the ninth inning for his second save of the season.

A.J. Pollock led all Diamondbacks with a pair of hits and went 2-3 in the game, with a walk and a stolen base.

The loss ended Arizona's winning streak at three games as their season record dropped to 10-6.

Arizona's offensive ineptitude was a strong departure from the previous game against the Padres. On Tuesday night the Diamondbacks scored a season high 11-runs against San Diego and by Wednesday they made Chacin look like an ace.

With the  win San Diego improved to 6-10 and are currently tied with the San Francisco Giants at the bottom of the National League West standings. The loss dropped Arizona to 10-6 but as of this posting they are a half of game behind the NL West leading Colorado Rockies.

The Diamondbacks and Padres finish their three-game series on Thursday at Petco Park. Arizona will look to complete the series victory and the contest is scheduled for 6:10 p.m (Pacific)

[Click for details, at fangraphs.com]
Frank N. Furter: A.J. Pollock, +18.7%
Riff-Raff: Zack Greinke, +18.3%
Rocky: David Peralta, -18.6%
Brad Majors: Lamb, -16.2%, Goldschmidt, -15.7%

Not going to win many games where your #2-4 hitters combine for more than -50% of Win Probability. This was also the first complete-game loss by a Diamondbacks' pitcher since Sep 6, 2013, when Patrick Corbin was on the wrong end of a 3-0 loss to the Giants, the game in which Yusmerto Petit almost perfecto'd us. The master of those was Randy Johnson: in 1999, he actually had three consecutive complete-game losses, losing 0-1, 0-2 and 0-1. Over that stretch, he pitched 25 innings, struck out 43 batters and had a 1.44 ERA, while going 0-3. Hopefully, not the start of something similar for Greinke, though he reduced his Petco ERA below the 1.90 figure mentioned in the preview.

Over 500 comments in the thread, despite this being easily the shortest game of the year, at 2:13. [There's only been one other under three hours, the 6-2 opener in San Francisco, which lasted 2:38] Indeed, discounting Shelby Miller's five-inning game at the tail end of last season, the last D-backs game which was quicker was... Hey, look at that: it was the same Sep 6, 2013 game mentioned above, where Corbin had a CG loss.

Anyway, present in the thread were:     AzRattler, BIGredmc, BenSharp, Diamondhacks, FormerlyChelsea75, GuruB, Hazzard21, Imstillhungry95, Jackwriter, James Attwood, Jim McLennan, JoeCB1991, JoeyLewis, Keegan Thompson, Makakilo, Michael McDermott, Oldenschoole, SedonaRed24, SongBird, Xerostomia, aldma, asteroid, blue_bulldog, coldblueAZ, edbigghead, hotclaws, makattack71, onedotfive, since_98 and smartplays. I'm awarding Comment of the Thread, to FormerlyChelsea75 for their analysis of the Padres closer:

As long as we don't see their closer again tomorrow, I think we'll be fine with that. A win will still give us a 5-5 road trip, which we'd all have settled for before it began. Patrick Corbin takes on Clayton Richard there and, please note, first pitch is AN HOUR EARLIER, at 6:10pm