Preview, #60: Arizona Diamondbacks vs. San Diego Padres

Robbie Ray owns a career-best 24.2-inning scoreless streak, the second longest active streak in the Majors behind Alex Wood of the Dodgers, who is at 25.1 IP (and currently. on the DL). It's the fourth longest scoreless streak in franchise history. If he gets through three scoreless tonight, he'll move up to #3; six scoreless would give Ray second. Here are the details of the relevant streaks:

1. Brandon Webb, 42.0 IP - July 20-Aug. 17, 2007
2. Brandon Webb, 30.0 IP - May 20-June 5, 2006
3. Andy Benes, 27.1 IP - Sept. 7-27, 1998
4. Robbie Ray, 24.2 IP - May 20, 2017-current

I think it's interesting that neither Curt Schilling nor, particularly, Randy Johnson every posted much in the way of a scoreless streak here. I think the Big Unit's best was back in July 1999, when he book-ended consecutive scoreless starts, of nine and eight innings, with three scoreless innings, for a 23-inning streak. The other two times Johnson has back-to-back scoreless outings, oddly, were both in July - 2001 and 2008. Though the former were not actually both starts, since it included his "power-outage" relief appearance in San Diego. We'll see how far Ray can continue against the Padres tonight.

Particularly since it appears they are now making players up entirely. I mean look at the line-up. It appears entirely populated by characters from a bad RPG character generator. Chase d'Arnaud? Yangervis Solarte? Dinelson Lamet? And don't even get me started on Matt Szczur, clearly the result of a poorly-constructed Markov chain. Should not pose too many problems for Ray tonight.