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We already have a split, and victory tonight would seal a victory in the opening series at Chase Field. That's quite something, considering it took the Diamondbacks seven attempts last year to win a series at home: they lost to the Rockies (twice), Cubs, Pirates and Giants, and also split a four-game set against the Cardinals, before finally taking two out of three against the Yankees, from May 16-18. Also worth noting: we had only one win over San Francisco in Phoenix all last year, so we've already surpassed that. Victory here would equal our home tally in almost the past TWO years, being 3-14 vs. SF at Chase from April 7, 2015 through the end of 2016.
Quite a number of changes in the Diamondbacks line-up from yesterday, as follows:
- Owings moves back from RF, taking over for Nick Ahmed at SS
- David Peralta comes in for Owings in RF
- Mathis replaces Chris Ianetta at C
- Descalso replaces Brandon Drury at 2B
- Herrmann replaces Yasmany Tomas at LF
Descalso and Herrmann get their first starts of the year, which will leave Jeremy Hazelbaker as the only position player not to have started over the course of the opening series. But in general, it seems to have been a fairly stable line-up through the first four games, compared to the Chip Hale era. Tonight also sees Ray's first start, and we'll be keeping an eye on the usual things for him from 2016, see if he has adjusted his approach: K's and pitch count. Taijuan Walker yesterday showed that high strikeout pitchers don't have to throw a ton of pitches, fanning seven over six innings, while throwing 94 pitches. A 70% strike-rate certainly helped there.
We'll see whether Ray was watching!