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Record: 3-1-1. Change on 2018: +0.5. 5-inning record: 3-0-2.
No local radio or television for this one, so this report is entirely off the box-score, and will likely be short. The main positive appears to have been a strong outing from the front of our pitching staff. Taylor Clark got the start, and tossed a pair of shutout innings, with two hits allowed and a pair of strikeouts (sadly, no Manny Machado to be seen for the Padres!). He was followed to the mound by Robby Scott, Joey Krehbiel, Rubby De La Rosa and Braden Shipley, who each delivered a zero in their inning of work. Particularly nice to see De La Rosa back, in his first spring outing since 2016, it appears. He worked around a one-out walk to Hunter Renfroe, getting Fernando Tatis immediately to ground into a double-play.
Heard Rubby De La Rosa touched 99 mph in his first game action since undergoing a second Tommy John surgery 18 months ago. He threw a scoreless inning, walking one.
— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) February 27, 2019
Things got... a bit stick thereafter. Joel Payamps allowed a run in the seventh and another in the eighth, before giving way to Evan Scribner, who finished off that frame. But the ninth was uglier still. Scribner got the first two outs impressively enough, on strikeouts around a double, but the third proved elusive. He instead allowed back-to-back homers, bringing three runs home for San Diego and tying the game. A Brad Goldberg took over and got the final out of the ninth. By mutual consent, it appears, the game was called at that point without even a token tenth inning played to try and separate the two sides.
The Arizona offense didn’t have much going in the early frames either, with just a C Caleb Joseph RBI single to show through the first five innings. DH Rob Refsnyder and Joseph then added further RBI singles in a two-run sixth. with SS Ildemaro Vargas and 3B Wyatt Mathisen having RBI knocks in the ninth - runs which turned out to be important in the final result. Joseph and SS Nick Ahmed each had two of Arizona’s eleven hits, the latter also drawing a walk. There were no stolen bases for the D-backs, but 1B Kevin Cron committed his first error of the pre-season. Tomorrow, we finish off February back at Salt River Fields, with a game against the Indians. Merrill Kelly makes his debut in a Diamondbacks’ uniform.