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Do you feel lucky, punk? Well... do ya? It’s Friday the 13th, with a full moon tonight - something we apparently won’t see again for thirty years, if my two minutes of Googling is to be believed. So, that’s my theme for the recap already sorted: either bad luck for the D-backs continues, or it’ll be counter-programmed. It’s a Mike Leake start for Arizona, so that could also go either way. He did reasonably well against the Reds when he faced them on Sunday in Cincinnati, holding them to two runs over 6.1 innings, and got a no-decision. But the end result was a 4-3 defeat for Arizona, starting them on the ongoing losing streak which has severely deflated any post-season hopes. Can he also end it?
That’s probably more on the distinctly lackluster offense of late. Over the last six games - including even the 2-0 win over the Reds on Saturday night - the D-backs have batted .163 (31-for-190), with an OPS of .515, and scored a total of just nine runs. That’s the lowest tally for Arizona over any six-game span in a season in five years. You have to go back to early September 2014, when the team went on a road-trip through Los Angeles and San Francisco, on which they scored 1, 2, 2, 1, 0 and 2 runs, for a total of eight runs. The all-time record is 7, on several occasions, most recently in August 2011. If the D-backs get shutout tonight, they’ll match the lowest tally over seven games, currently 9, done in 2003 + 2011.
Particularly outstandingly awful over that time, have been Carson Kelly, Christian Walker and Jarrod Dyson, who have combined to go 1-for-37 with 14 strikeouts in that time (respectively: 0-for-11, 1-for-17 and 0-for-9). Dyson has at least taken four walks, but still... At least only one of that trio are in the line-up this evening, so we’ll see what happens. Be nice to open the home-stand with a solid victory for the Diamondbacks. It probably won’t matter too much in the larger scheme of things, but I do still want them to finish the season strong, to give us something warm and fuzzy for the off-season.