Tidings from Turambar: D-backs 3, Guardians 12 - Turn out the Lights

Record: 43-29. Pace: 97-65. Change on 2022: +11.

Gonna be real with you readers. I missed the first 3.5 innings of this game playing golf at the Continental Golf Club. I played “meh” golf much in the same way the Dbacks decided to play “meh” baseball.

Thus I find myself walking in to a 1-11 beat down slightly sun burnt and annoyed at my poor putting. So. Join me now for this debacle.

[Jim: The most entertaining thing which happened to that point was a lights failure at Chase Field. A downtown power surge knocked out a good chunk of the lights at the ballpark, and led to a 15-minute delay before play could be resumed. To be frank, we’d have been better off if it hadn’t been. Zach Davies was flat out terrible, allowing nine runs (one unearned) on nine hits and a walk over 3.2 innings. That boosted his season ERA to the Diet MadBum figure of 7.11. Jose Ruiz wasn’t much better, allowing more hits (5) than outs recorded (4), as a very nice Fathers’ Day crowd of over forty-two thousand, were not exactly treated to a shining advertisement for Diamondbacks baseball. Now, read on...]

Bottom of the 4th and digging out of a hole is a thing right now, but not a reality, as we leave Sneks on 2nd and 3rd.

Davies 8 earned runs he gave up have well and truly screwed us. Seems like he might be moving in the wrong direction as a starting pitcher, which likely reinforces the need to trade for another starter. Time shall tell though….

The series is won though, so I can’t get too mad, but it’s tough to have games like this though.

Cleveland tacks on another run in the top of the 5th, making this game mostly unattainable at 1-12, yet still I write.

Then the bottom of the 5th happened…..and we got back 2runs to make it a 9 run deficit….yay CWalk!

After leaving 11dbacks stranded we exit the 6th still down by a lot. Jamison is in now, and likely for the rest of the way. Kinda wish we’d give him another go as a starter, but his success in long relief cannot be ignored.

The rest of this game must and should be ignored. Bats have no answers and even if they did, a 9run deficit is something even our Answerbacks would have a tough go of.

Then……then Rojas came in to pitch in the 9th. Lol. Though on a fun note he did throw a scoreless frame, so that’s something.

Guys. I was really looking forward to cobbling together a recap after golf. I was really expecting to have an engaging game to write about.

That’s not this game. That’s not now.

Bells and whistles

You’ll understand that it wasn’t a very happy Gameday Thread, though there were a couple of Sedona Red comments, and 144 in total, which is probably about a hundred more than this fiasco deserved. Dbacks fan from Japan wins it today, for this tongue-in-cheek expression of concern.

On the plus side, the Dodgers’ meltdown continued, as they completed being swept by the Giants, losing by a score of 7-3. Despite that, the D-backs’ lead in the division still shrunk by half a game, to 3¹⁄₂ games, because the Giants leap-frogged the Dodgers and are now in second place. That might make next weekend’s series against them in San Francisco more significant than it seemed it might be a month ago. But immediately, the D-backs hit the road, for a three game set in Milwaukee, followed by a make-up of that Canadian smoke-out contest in Washington. Merrill Kelly starts for Arizona, with a first pitch at 5:10 pm Arizona time.