Diamondbacks 10, Padres 3

Well, this was a fun one, as well as a night of firsts. Merrill Kelly had his first MLB appearance as a 30-year-old “rookie,” Jon Duplantier and his glasses made their major league debut, and the Diamondbacks offense scored early, scored often, and kept piling on, which we haven’t seen a whole lot of in the last year or so.

Adam Jones put the good guys on the board right away, with a towering lead-off homer to left field, and the hits (and runs) just kept on coming. The D-Backs scored in the first, second, third and fifth innings, spotting Kelly a 9-0 lead before the Padres even got on the board. Quite the change from the first four games of the season. Just sayin’.

Meanwhile, Kelly did a marvelous job through the first five innings, getting ahead in the count, making Padres batters put the ball in play, and basically just mowing ‘em down. One hit and two walks were all San Diego managed to scrape together until the sixth inning, when he gave up two hits and three runs, capped off by a Fernando Tatis Jr. two-run homer to left that was essentially a carbon copy of Jones’s shot in the Diamondbacks first. Still, it was a helluva start by Kelly, and he definitely pitched a lot better than his final pitching line maybe suggests.

The D-Backs picked up one more run in the seventh, and long-awaited prospect Jon Duplantier closed out the game with a three-inning save—not too shabby to earn a save in a game where your team has a seven-run lead.

So this was a good one, and a needed palate cleanser after the opening season in Los Angeles. Full recap to follow, as shortly as all those runs will allow.