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The Diamondbacks have a chance to do something tonight they haven’t done for more than three months: win four games in a row. That’s their season high winning streak, established from May 2 through May 6, against the Marlins and Rockies. But they have been here before. Since that date, they have won three in a row on four occasions... but are 0-4 in the next games, as follows:
- May 11: L 3-11 vs. MIA
- May 22: L 4-5 @ CHC
- July 24: L 3-4 vs. WSN
- July 29: L 2-5 @ ATL
Though I think the worst thing is perhaps them going more than two months without the D-backs being able to put together more than two consecutive victories.
Much the same goes for tonight’s starter, Madison Bumgarner, whose only consistent trait has been his inconsistency. Over his 22 starts this season, he has only posted consecutive victories once, on July 4th and 9th. With his last outing being a no-decision, that’s definitely not something which is going to change this evening. We’ve also yet to see any back-to-back quality starts from Bumgarner, though those have been relatively few and far between anyway, with just 5 in those 22 games. That’s 23%, which is well below the current MLB average of 36%, even in this era of shorter outings by starting pitchers. [10 years ago, starters posted a quality start more often than not, at 51% of the time]
By Game Score, Bumgarner certainly hasn’t been the best Arizona starter. His average of 49.1 is below Merrill Kelly (57.5), Gallen (also 57.5) and Zach Davies (51.1). But you can argue he has been the most consistent. The spread between his best and worst outings is smaller than the others mentioned, at 46 points. The same figure for the others is 71 (Kelly), 58 (Gallen) and 50 (Davies). For amusement, I took a look at which starter has the biggest gap. The answer appears to be the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas at a whopping 93 points. He had an 85 score for 8.2 innings of one-hit ball on June 14, but also plunged to -8 on August 9, when he allowed 14 hits and 10 earned runs in 2.2 innings, the worst start in the majors this year.
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