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Roster moves
The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves:
- Reinstated RHP Scott McGough from the Paternity List.
- Optioned RHP Carlos Vargas to Triple-A Reno following last night’s game.
The D-backs’ 40-man roster remains at 40.
Well, that was quick. McGough - or, more importantly, his missus - clearly was not hanging about on the childbearing front, and so he’s back on the horse after missing just the one game. Interesting that Vargas is the player optioned. He had been quite busy, appearing in five of the team’s eleven games to date, striking out seven in 4.2 innings. That’s the good news. The bad news? He also walked four and allowed two home-runs in that time. He had been the fieriest of fire-ballers, throwing 11 pitches clocked at 100 mph or harder. topping out at 101.3 with this pitch to strike out Dodger Chris Taylor. That was the hardest officially clocked by an Arizona pitcher in the Statcast era.
Indeed, all other pitchers combined had managed to throw only five. Two were by Rubby de la Rosa, with one each by Daniel Hudson, Luis Frias and Yoan Lopez. However, as Vargas’s demotion today shows, there is more to pitching than just throwing extremely hard. If you’re not able to hit your spots, or there’s insufficient movement on the pitches, then this can lead to the ball departing in the opposite direction at equally high velocity. That said, none of the 11 pitches where Vargas reached triple digits actually led to a hit. Six were balls, three were fouled off, there was one called strike, and the swinging strike to Taylor. Does look like Pedro Ruiz is here for a while, though his Arizona debut was not impressive.
Today’s recap finally see Ben getting his chance in the rotation, after a weird off-day last Wednesday! So, stay tuned for that...
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