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Preview #77: Philadelphia Phillies @ Arizona Diamondbacks

The series finale, and I can already hear the complaints about the line-up...

Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

Today's Lineups

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
Daniel Nava - LF Chris Herrmann - LF
Freddy Galvis - SS Nick Ahmed - SS
Aaron Altherr - RF David Peralta - RF
Maikel Franco - 3B Jake Lamb - 3B
Odubel Herrera - CF Chris Owings - 2B
Andres Blanco - 2B Daniel Descalso - 1B
Brock Stassi - 1B Rey Fuentes - CF
Andrew Knapp - C Jeff Mathis - C
Nick Pivetta - RHP Zack Greinke - RHP

No Goldschmidt. No Drury. Herrmann batting lead-off, ahead of Ahmed. Bottom half of Descalso (hitting .231), Fuentes (.241), Mathis (.165) and the pitcher's spot. Insert paragraph complaining about Torey Lovullo clearly not wanting to win the game here...

But, really: if you're going to give Goldschmidt a game off, doing so with the team's Opening Day starter on the mound, and going up against the worst team in major-league baseball is as good a day as any, I'd say. But it would be interesting to do a spreadsheet and figure out what the average runs per game scored is, when Player X has been in the starting line-up this year. I just need to figure out how to do it in Google Sheets. There will probably be pivot tables involved. So, don't hold your breath.

Greinke took his first loss of the month in his last start, but that did come against the Rockies at Coors Field: if he'd got the same run support the starting pitchers did in the other two games, he'd have got a W, rather than coming out on the wrong end of an rather unlucky 4-3 loss. I'd say that allowing four runs over 7.1 innings at Coors probably should count as a quality start. It has actually been a while since Greinke has had one of those: his outing in Miami on the first day of the month, in fact. Since then, his three starts have seen an ERA of 3.50, but he has fallen short of six innings twice, and the Coors game was the other. K:BB of 19:3 over 18 innings, so I'm predicting this afternoon ends the streak.