Diamondbacks 0, Brewers 1: Poor baserunning sinks the Dbacks

The Diamondbacks put together a threat against Jhoulys Chacin in the first inning. With two outs, Jake Lamb knocked a double off the wall in right field, and Paul Goldschmidt drew a walk. Daniel Descalso wasn’t quite clutch enough, and popped up to third. Add that to a Marte getting thrown out at second on a clear single in the second, the offense wasnt’ off to a very hot start.

Matt Koch did a lot better in his halves of the innings. He struck out Yelich and Choi to start the bottom of the first, and Cain grounded out. Flipped the script a bit in the bottom of the second, when he got two fly outs to start the inning and then struck out Jonathan Villar for the third out. Again he sat down the side in the third.

The fourth inning was a bit more of a struggle for him. Christian Yelich flew out and Ji-Man Choi grounded out to start the inning. However, Lorenzo Cain singled and Travis Shaw walked to put two on and two out for Domingo Santana. He smacked the first pitch he saw to deep center field and, well, just watch it

Easy contender for play of the year right there. That ended the inning and kept the game tied at zero.

Koch continued pitching well through the fifth inning. He ran into a wall in the sixth, though. A lead off double to Choi and a Cain walk set the table. He got Travis Shaw to ground out, but the runners moved to second and third. That was the end of the line for him. Lovullo pulled him out of the game in favor of Jorge De La Rosa. De La Rosa gave up an RBI sac fly for the second out, but got another pop out to end the inning and keep it at one.

That turned out to be an insurmountable deficit for the inept Diamondbacks offense. A potential threats in the seventh, eighth, and ninth were all erased on baserunning miscues. In the seventh, Ketel Marte got himself doubled off after a fly out to shallow center field was caught by a sliding Cain, who then tossed behind him for the out at first. Jerrod “I’m only on this team to steal bases” Dyson was thrown out after cleanly stealing second, but then sliding off the bag. And in the ninth, pinch runner Nick Ahmed was thrown out by a mile trying to steal second base while representing the tying run with no outs.

★ Matt Koch: 5.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K

That’s the only star I’m handing out tonight. If they want more stars, they need to play better

Showed Up: Matt Koch 16.6%, Jake Lamb, 9.9%

Didn’t: Chris Owings -19.4%, Nick Ahmed -19.2%, Daniel Descalso -14.4%, John Ryan Murphy -10.3%, Paul Goldschmidt -9.2%

The only caveat that I would add to those numbers is Murphy’s comes mostly from Marte’s baserunning screw ups, which don’t seem to be counted against him, unlike Ahmed’s.

716 comments tonight, of which a whopping 255 belonged to DC. In an incredibly distant second, GoldyHitAnotherOne had 102. All present were:

AZDovs11, Andrew Chrun, AzDbackfanInDc, AzRattler, BigSmarty, DBacksEurope, DORRITO, GoldyHitAnotherOne, GuruB, Imstillhungry95, Jackwriter, Jim McLennan, Makakilo, Michael McDermott, MikeMono, MrMrrbi, Renin, ShirtOffYourBack, Sprankton, The so-called Beautiful, Umbrella24, Xerostomia, asteroid, coldblueAZ, dbrowell, dzuch, edbigghead, hotclaws, megnetic, onedotfive, samath, shoewizard, smartplays, suroeste

The only red comments were from Jim, reposting tweets into the GDT, so no CotN tonight. This game doesn’t deserve one anyway. Early start tomorrow, with a 10:10 Arizona time first pitch. Tune in to see if the Diamondbacks can avoid another sweep...