Diamondbacks Post-season Gameday Thread, #4: 10/9 @ Dodgers

The bullpen chart will show up here if I can figure out how to do it on my phone. So probably not, unless some other admin wants to plug it in!

Give yourself a bonus point if you can figure out where we are, based on the (slightly off-level!) landmark above. Or, rather: were. As I write this, we are now driving from there to the Snakepitette's house a couple of hours inland. [Safety clarification: Mrs SnakePit is driving, I'm bouncing around beside her. The roads here are not the smoothest] I have firmly laid down that tonight is for baseball recappage. The Snakepitette does not have cable, so... workarounds will need to be found, but her set-up is similar to ours, so I'm optimistic something can be figured out. But if the recap sounds like it was written by an AI, based off aggrieved social media posts... Well, you will understand the reasons why. Pics of her home turf suggest we are lucky to have running water. I'm just saying.

Tonight sees the Diamondbacks seek to follow up on their devastating - especially to Bob Costas - 11-2 victory over the Dodgers in Game 1. If the pressure was originally on LA, that is now all the more the case. Arizona has already accomplished everything they set out to do, having secured the split and taken home-field advantage. A defeat tonight would not be the end of the world. For Los Angeles, however, going 2-0 down at home in a best-of-five series is close to as bad as it gets. 32 teams have done that. Three have won, with the Orioles currently in exactly that hole this season on the American League side of the bracket.

I think it's key for Zac Gallen to keep the Dodgers in check early. If they don't score early - especially if the D-backs do - then it's possible they'll start to tighten up, and that will only makes things harder. Of course, ideally we'll get a repeat of Saturday, with the Diamondbacks making an early statement and effectively ending the evening as a meaningful contest. It's not going to be easy, to be clear, but after the way the team has played over their first three post-season contests, you've got to feel hopeful.