Preview #123: Arizona Diamondbacks @ Minnesota Twins

Still no word at time of writing from the Diamondbacks, as to who will be starting tomorrow’s game for them. I am thinking it’s probably going to be Braden Shipley, since his scheduled start for the Reno Aces never materialized. I doubt the team would want to go the bullpen route, in the middle of this streak of 20 games in 20 days, with another full week to go after tomorrow. Hopefully, Zack Greinke can get us the win here, and we can then take the series tomorrow. The D-backs haven’t won consecutive games since August 4, and I think that’s contributing significantly to the angst among a certain section of fandom.

Yesterday’s win, together with the Angels loss (on a walk-off grand-slam, no less) lifted Minnesota into a virtual tie with Anaheim for the second AL wild-card, one-half game up on the Royals. Make no mistake: this is another decent team the D-backs are playing. However, despite the W-L record, the Twins have still been outscored by 54 runs, a run differential which is a whopping 152 runs worse than the Diamondbacks. If “Not allowing six home-runs” isn’t the key to the game on this afternoon’s broadcast, I’m going to be very disappointed.

Brandon Drury gets the DH role today, with J.D. Martinez returning to the line-up after being a late scratch yesterday afternoon. But keep an eye out behind home-plate, where we are graced by the presence of Angel Hernandez... He and his umpire pals will be wearing white wristbands today, after Ian Kinsler “denigrated the entire MLB umpiring staff.” Their statement said, “Enough is enough. Umpires will wear the wristbands until our concerns are taken seriously by [the] Office of the Commissioner.” If you’ve been following the SnakePit this year, you can probably guess what my opinion in on this...