Preview, #52: Arizona Diamondbacks @ Milwaukee Brewers

Certainly, the D-backs will have to play a great deal better, on both sides of the ball, than they did yesterday. But there's something to be said for getting all your suck out at once. If there's a three-game series, you'll trade a blowout loss in one game for narrow victories in the other two, any day of the week. And that was only the D-backs' third blowout (5 or more runs) loss of the season, the other's being the 7-1 defeat in Los Angeles, and the 9-1 contest in Coors Field. I tend to think that's a good sign, rather than your record being largely dependent on one-run games like the Rockies (who lost their first such in Philadelphia, dropping them to 9-1 there).

But if the Diamondbacks are going to win the series, they're going to have to do it without Paul Goldschmidt, who is absent from the starting line-up for only the second time this season. His previous absence was slightly more than a month ago, coming in as a late defensive replacement on April 24 against the San Diego Padres, in a game which Arizona edged, by a 7-6 margin., If this game proves close, we may see something similar, or Goldschmidt coming off the bench to pinch-hit. If not, it will end Goldy's streak of consecutive games in which he has appeared at 63, the current run having started on September 20 last year.

That's obviously modest, by the standards of Lou Gehrig, but that's another thing which has gone the way of the complete game in modern baseball. Over the past decade or so, since Miguel Tejada's run ended in June 2007, there has only been one player to have reached even 500 consecutive games - Prince Fielder played in 547 straight, through May 2014. Last season, there were just three players - Alcides Escobar, Jonathan Schoop and George Springer - to play in 162 games. Escobar is the only one to have played in every game for his team this year, so holds the current active mark, at 219 games. That's a derisive snort from Cal Ripken Jr you're hearing...