Diamondbacks 8, Giants 5: Not that close

Record: 2-4. Change on 2022: +1

Drey Jameson continued to make a good case for winning the fifth starter’s job with another good spring outing at Scottsdale Stadium this afternoon. He retired all six batters he faced, two of them by the strikeout. Small sample size, naturally, but four innings of one-hit ball would seem to fall into the “making a statement” category. The next four innings were also scoreless, courtesy of Miguel Castro, Kyle Nelson, Kevin Ginkel and Zach McAllister. Then the B-bullpen showed up, to make the Giants feel less sad, and conceded five runs on six hits and two walks over the final three innings. But as over the first weekend, these are names we should not be concerned about.

Meanwhile, Carson Kelly had himself a very nice day on offense, getting three hits, including a home-run (above), and driving in four runs. Josh Rojas went 2-for-2 with an RBI, and Lourdes Gurriel reached twice, on a hit and a walk. Rojas also stole a couple of bases, including a double-steal with Gurriel in the fourth, which set up Kelly for a two-RBI single. Ketel Marte batted lead-off, and got a hit, but was also picked-off second base. I sense the team are going to be aggressive on the basepaths this year, so be nice if they got as many as possible of the inevitable TOOTBLANs out of their system early.

Despite the teams combining for 13 runs on 21 hits, this was still completed in a crisp 2:31. Tomorrow afternoon sees the team face the Dodgers for the first time in 2023, over at Camelback Ranch. Ryne Nelson will be looking to bounceback from a shaky first start.