Diamondbacks 2, Colorado 13: Buried in the Avalanche

It’s been a rough couple of weeks to be a Diamondbacks fan. All those games we were winning going into the late innings, all those blown opportunities by the the D-backs bullpen. All the early offense in the world can’t help you when that sort of thing keeps happening. And that sort of thing has kept happening. Not tonight.

We did get another manifestation of early offense, in the form of a leadoff triple by AJ Pollock and an Eduardo Escobar single that had us on top by a run two batters into the contest. David Peralta, batting third tonight, grounded into a double play to deflate our chances of putting up a crooked number to start the night off right, despite a two-out single by Paul Goldschmidt. Still, we’d drawn first blood. 1-0 D-BACKS

Sadly, that’s all the highlight-reel joy we’re getting tonight. Zack Godley took the mound for the Diamondbacks, and promptly got himself into trouble thanks to a leadoff single to Charlie Blackmon followed by a balk (!) and an infield single to DJ LeMahieu that led to the first mound visit of the game by pitching coach Mike Butcher. However, LeMahieu TOOTBLANned himself off the basepaths, Nolan Arenado struck out, and miraculously Godley wriggled off the hook.

Both sides settled down a bit, for awhile, with no more runs scoring through the next three innings. Godley pitched around doubles in the third and fourth innings, while Colorado German Marquez surrendered a third-inning single to Goldy, but both offenses were quiet. Marquez has been increasingly dominant his last few starts, and he looked it tonight, striking out 6 in a row at one point. Godley, meanwhile, was not particularly sharp, but he managed to keep it together through four.

That changed, sadly, in the fifth inning, when the first five Rockies batters reached on a double, a single, another single, and then back-to-back walks to Blackmon and LeMahieu that only required nine pitches. Nobody out, bases loaded, but only two runs were in, so Torey Lovullo elected to give Zack the hook and hope that Silvio Bracho could stop the bleeding. Bracho came close, almost getting a double play on an Arenado grounder to Daniel Descalso at second base, but our boys couldn’t turn it. One batter later, Bracho served up a meatball to Trevor Story that the Rockies shortstop promptly deposited into the center field seats. 6-1 COLORADO

And that, essentially, was that. A couple of two out singles by Escobar and Peralta led to a second run in the sixth, helped along by a Gerardo Parra throwing error (thanks, old friend!), but our fizzling mid-game bats continued to fizzle, so that was that, pretty much for the rest of the game. 6-2 COLORADO

Meanwhile, the Rockies piled on again in the seventh inning, putting up seven more runs against our hapless bullpen. Thankfully, I dozed off through most of that, and even if I hadn’t I wouldn’t traumatize you further with a blow-by-blow. Didn’t really matter, though...the Rockies didn’t need it tonight. 13-2 COLORADO

And that was it, sadly. No joy, game over. Sorry, kids.

WPA AND OTHER SADNESS, COURTESY OF FANGRAPHS.COM

The Goat: Zack Godley, 4 IP, 5 ER (-11.8 WPA pitching)
The Tiny Little Bright Glimmer: Eduardo Escobar, 3 for 3, 1 R, 1 RBI (+6.7 WPA)

In the Game Day Thread, we had 355 total comments from 28 commenters, which strikes me as surprisingly lively in these dark times. Well done, and props to you all, AZDovs11, Andrew Chrun, AzCutter, AzDbackfanInDc, AzRattler, DeadManG, GuruB, J he, Jack Sommers, Jackwriter, Jim McLennan, Johnneu, Makakilo, Michael McDermott, MikeMono, MrMrrbi, Penitentiary Face, Renin, Rockkstarr12, catbat, coldblueAZ, dbacks13, edbigghead, errordataguy, gamepass, hmarcus, onedotfive, and smartplays.

CoTG goes to onedotfive, for a fine deployment of gallows humor:

And that’s it for my last scheduled recap of the year. We face the Rockies again tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel. Here’s hoping that something clicks with Zack Greinke on the mound. And keep in mind that, even with as bad as things have been recently, there’s still time to turn this around. My fingers will be crossed. Go D-backs!