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The Diamondbacks made another roster move today, sending Stefan Crichton back to Reno. To replace him, a bit of a surprise, as the team dipped down to Double-A and called up Bo Takahashi, who will be making his major-league debut. Takahashi has been in the Jackson rotation, starting 21 games there, so is presumably here to provide a bit of length out of the bullpen. He has put up a 3.87 ERA over 107 innings of work, with a K:BB of 93:36. Despite his name (his first name is actually Rodrigo), Bo was born in Brazil. That country is home to the largest Japanese population outside of the country itself, with around 1.6 million Brazilians of Japanese descent.
If he gets a chance to take the mound, Takahashi will become the first Brazilian-born player to appear for the Diamondbacks, and just the sixth in major-league history: catcher Yan Gomes, currently with Washington, is the best-known, having appeared in 723 games. Brazil will become the 18th location outside the 50 states of the USA to have given birth to a D-back, in total being responsible for 121 players including Bo. The breakdown of the other 17 is: Dominican Republic (44 players), Venezuela (26), Puerto Rico (12), Mexico (11), Cuba (8), Canada (3), Japan (3), Australia (2), Nicaragua (2), Panama (2), Curacao (1), Germany (1), Jamaica (1), Netherlands (1), Philippines (1), South Korea (1) and the US Virgin Islands (1).
Meanwhile, the team as a whole will be trying to avoid a four-game sweep at the hands of the Giants. Defeat would also end their lengthy streak of sitting within two games of .500, and would drop the Diamondbacks to a season-low three games below .500. They are also facing the Giants’ ace, Madison Bumgarner - though of late, it has been Arizona’s pitching which has been the problem, rather than its hitting. They have conceded 28 runs over the first three games of the season, and the Giants have hit for a .365 clip (46-for-126), with eight home-runs. We’ll need an awful lot better than that from Merrill Kelly, but he has a 10.71 ERA over his last four starts, despite getting the W last time out, in Colorado.