Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #6: 4/4 @ Padres

Winning sixteen games last year, Yu Darvish was the only Padres to have more than ten victories in 2022. But he’s the last member of the rotation to get into a major-league game, having spend much of spring training as part of the victorious Japanese squad in the World Baseball Classic. He only threw 93 pitches for the team there, though did work in a couple of camp games after teturning to the team. Manager Bob Melvin says there should be no real pitch limit on Darvish, saying he threw 80 pitches in his final camp outing. But it would be nice to test that out. Not that plate discipline has been the D-backs best suit so far, with only two walks in 166 plate-appearances so far.

Last night was actually the sixth consecutive game for Arizona with one or no walks, as they also had no bases on balls in the 2022 series finale against the Brewers. It’s the longest such streak in the National League since the Marlins had eight games in a row with 0/1 walks, back in August 2015. The five to open a season is the longest since the 1967 Giants matched that figure. To find the last team to go more than five, you have to go back more than a century, and you’ll discover the 1920 Phillies, who had just one walk in their first eight games. Of course, they only struck out 23 times over those eight contests. The 2023 D-backs have already blown past that, with 37 K’s so far.