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Last season, the Giants had their second-worst year since moving from New York to San Francisco. Their 64-98 record was head only of the 1985 team, who lost 100 games. If history is any guide, the Giants will be a lot better, because the 1985 incarnation improved by 21 games the following year, though still finished 13 games back in the NL West. So far, the 2018 version is headed for a .500 season, not only having evenly split their eight games to date, but splitting each series: they took two of four from the Dodgers in Los Angeles, then one against Seattle in San Francisco, and one more against Los Angeles over the weekend, with the third game being rained out.
That streak is likely to end, one way or the other, in this three-game set. Though there is rain forecast for both tomorrow and Wednesday, it’s Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday night which are most likely, so with luck the games on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon will be able to dodge the raindrops. I’m sure the D-backs will simply be happy to be in somewhat warmer climes than St. Louis. The expected temperature at first pitch tonight is around the mid-sixties, which will be 25 degrees or so warmer than it was in Busch Stadium yesterday, even for a day game. Though it’s a good job we didn’t go to Chicago and face the Cubs instead, going by what Wrigley Field looked like today!
Another game against a left-hander: they’ll be evenly split after this one. There’ll be no complaints from the D-backs, I suspect, since they’ve done rather better as a roster against southpaws this year:
vs. RHP: .232/.332/.345 = .677 OPS
vs. LHP: .267/.361/.505 = .865 OPS
Even the left-handed batters have been doing well, led by the pair of home-runs David Peralta and Daniel Descalso (above) swatted off Clayton Kershaw when we saw him at Chase Field. If that keeps up, we should move to 8-2 tonight. It’s Dano_in_Tucson’s debut as a recapper, and I imagine he’ll be hoping he doesn’t suffer the same fate as poor Alex, who ended up having to write about the longest game in Chase Field history last Monday!