Recaps

[AZ Central] Diamondbacks stunned in 9th-inning collapse vs. Twins - “It’s what I was brought over here to do,” Sewald said. “With us struggling and then finally getting that chance to try to get off this losing streak and get called upon to do what I was supposed to do and then fail, miserably, is disappointing. These guys have been battling. They’ve been battling all year. We’ll get the ship righted, but it really sucks for the first one to go so poorly. I hope I get another one really soon so I can get this one behind me and get back to work.”

[Dbacks.com] 'Gut punch': D-backs walked off for 6th straight loss - “It’s hard to believe,” Lovullo said. “A lot of the things that I saw today are hard to believe or hard to explain. I’ll move off of it at some point. For right now, I’m going to feel what I’m feeling and try to understand what happened.” “Frustrated, pissed off. I mean, we’re trying to win,” said [Christian] Walker. “We’re doing everything we can in our power. Yeah, just not going our way. Nothing to do but keep working, keep preparing. It’s frustration, but it’s not giving up. It’s not hopeless or anything like that. We’re close.”

[Arizona Sports] Zac Gallen deals, D-backs set franchise steals record but fall to Twins on walk-off homer - Gallen gave the D-backs seven innings with two earned runs on four hits. He struck out eight hitters with a slightly different pitch mix than usual, leaning more heavily on his knuckle-curveball at 35% to get six whiffs. The All-Star broke his four-game streak of giving up a home run, as a Willi Castro double was Minnesota’s only extra-base hit until the ninth. Gallen looked untouchable through five innings with no runs on one hit and six strikeouts.

[SI] Paul Sewald Walked Off in First Save Chance with D-backs - The Arizona Diamondbacks made history today. In fact, they were the first team since 1977 to have 10+ hits, 8+ stolen bases, 6+ walks, and score 3 or fewer runs since the San Diego Padres did it against the Montreal Expos in a 15-inning loss. That's not the kind of history that you want to have. In total, they left 12 men on base. That's inexcusable and only highlights their horrific hitting with runners on base. The team went 2-11 in those situations. They had numerous opportunities to put up some crooked numbers. There was some crushing bad luck like when Christian Walker hit a 112 mph line drive right into the third baseman Willi Castro's glove. However, sometimes teams have to do more than just look at bad luck. They have to overcome it and force the issue.

[AP] Twins sweep Diamondbacks on Wallner’s walk-off homer in 9th inning - The start of the game was delayed 2 hours, 12 minutes, due to inclement weather. The Diamondbacks set a franchise record with eight stolen bases. They pulled off three double steals of second and third, and Jake McCarthy and Jace Peterson each stole second in the eighth. Arizona entered third in the majors with 111 steals. However, none of the eight stolen bases led to runs as the offense stranded 12 runners.

Team news

Nope. I've basically got nothing. I will admit, my trawling of the Internet might have been a little less stringent than normal for this piece. But I think I will probably be spending this day in a largely D-backs free state.

And, elsewhere...

Let's look at some other struggles, might make us feel better about ourselves!

[Mercury News] SF Giants swept by A’s, choke away three-run lead to MLB’s worst team - Giants led 6-3 in the fifth but coughed up the lead with errors and free passes, now face 21 straight vs. teams .500 or better. Alex Cobb sat and stewed. All he could do was watch as the Giants’ lead evaporated in the sixth inning of an eventual 8-6 loss Sunday afternoon to the Oakland A’s. Removed with one out in the sixth, after throwing only 77 pitches, the Giants’ All-Star starter watched from the bench in the first-base dugout as Brandon Crawford bounced a throw to first base. He rested his head in his hands as Luke Jackson, called on to relieve him, walked back-to-back batters, forcing in a run.

[ESPN] Reds’ Lyon Richardson allows two HRs on first two pitches in majors - The Washington Nationals' CJ Abrams and Lane Thomas hit Lyon Richardson's first two major league pitches for home runs in Sunday's 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds. The right-handed Richardson, 23, is the first pitcher to allow a home run on each of the first two pitches of his major league career in the Elias Sports Bureau's pitch count era, which dates back to 1999.

Se7en (1995)

Rating: B

Dir: David Fincher
Star: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey

As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of this, it’s interesting to see where those involved have gone. Freeman is likely the least changed since. Pitt has become a decent actor rather than a clothes-horse, even if his performance here was clearly a work in progress, as the finale obviously demonstrates (“What’s in the box? WHAT’S IN THE BOX!!!?!?”). Paltrow is selling vagina-scented candles. Spacey turned out not just to be playing a creepy predator. But it’s perhaps Fincher who “needed” the film most, after the disaster across the board which was Alien 3. This proved his chops as a serious director, and established the dark, heavy tone which has characterized much of his career since.

Indeed, it’s arguably characterized much of the genre since, to the extent that a lot of what we get here now feels clichéd. Oh, look: a perpetually under-lit and rainy metropolis, where evil lurks behind every corner. Even the title sequence seems to be copied by every other movie about a serial killer. It’s difficult to remember how novel this all was at the time, and also how generating atmosphere is not just a case of turning the brightness down, as annoyingly too many film-makers since seem to think. Right from the start, this lays heavily on the viewer, with a tone as consistently oppressive as the weather in the unnamed city, where John Doe (Spacey) is committing murders which punish the Seven Deadly Sins.

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