Diamondbacks 1, Bronx Bombers 7: Judge Happens

Kinda sorry about this, folks. I mean, Aaron Judge went deep three times, when only once would have been enough, and I don’t think I had anything to do with that. But if we are feeling superstitious, which as baseball fans of course we are, I think I have to own this. When I was preparing my scoresheet for the game, I saw that Luke Weaver, one of the sad failures of the Paul Goldschmidt trade, was starting for the Yankees, and I chortled. And when I posted the first comment on tonight’s Gameday Thread, I wrote this:

Weaver proceeded to get through his first two innings of work with only 18 pitches thrown. Oops.

Meanwhile, Brandon Pfaadt was pitching for us, and while he wasn’t as efficient as Luke Weaver was, he pitched around a one-out double to Aaron Judge in the first, and retired the side in the bottom of the second on three successive strikeouts. Which led me, of course, to post this:

Needless to say, neither of those comments aged well at all. Weaver gave up his second single of the night in the top of the third, to Geraldo Perdomo, but nothing came of it. Pfaadt gave up a leadoff single to some guy named Oswaldo to start the bottom of the frame, then wretchedly bobbled a comebacker from some guy named Oswald, losing a shot at an easy 1-6-3 double play and instead putting runners on first and second with nobody out. He then racked up his fifth strikeout of the night, which was nice, I suppose, but then Aaron Judge came up for the second time, and hit the first pitch he saw over the wall in right center. Two more Ks ended the inning, but well, it was the first bricks in the wall. 3-0 Bronx

And so yeah, that’s how it was. Weaver cruised through two more innings, before giving up another single to Perdomo to lead off the sixth, followed one out later by a Ketel Marte single to right that advanced Pardomo to second and earned Weaver the hook. Some person named Jhony Brito came on to relieve him, put out the guttering candle of our first potential rally, and wound up pitching the rest of the game, as it turned out.

Meanwhile, Pfaadt had earned the hook for himself as well, with only one out in the bottom of the fifth. He surrendered three straight extra-base hits to start the frame—a double to the aforementioned Oswald, a follow-up double as the lineup turned over that scored Oswald, and then Judge’s second dinger of the night, again over the wall in right center. He finally recorded his first out of the inning, but then gave up another single, and Torey Lovullo pulled him for Slade Cecconi. Cecconi shut things down in short order, but it was a couple more bricks in the wall, wasn’t it? 6-0 Bronx

So it went. Cecconi pitched the seventh for us, which gave him the opportunity to face Judge for the first time in his evening, and serve up yet another dinger over the right field wall, after giving up a leadoff “double” on a Jace Peterson drop that was only saved by Gaby Moreno running up the line to cover third base and tag out Yankees’ leadoff hitter Estevan Florial as he tried to stretch his “double” into a triple. Cecconi prevented further traffic or damage, but all in all....well, you know. 7-0 Bronx

Meanwhile, we continued to trip the light craptastic on offense (there’s your Snake Bytes title for tomorrow, whoever is writing it, unless you have something of your own in mind), doing nothing until one out in the ninth, when Christian Walker, who had been frustrated all evening, finally gave us a video highlight for me to share with you all: what I thought would be a video highlight to share with you all, but which the Diamondbacks didn’t even wind up sharing on Twitter X. Sad times. But it was that kind of night. Walker hit a solo dinger over the wall in left center to get us on the board and make it feel maybe a bit respectable at the end. 7-1 Bronx

Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs

You Dirty Rat: Brandon Pfaadt (4¹⁄₃ IP, 8 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 HR, 0 BB, 8 K, -24.4% WPA)

We had a nicely lively Gameday Thread, at least, especially for such a dismal game with an early start time. There are 184 comments at time of writing, though to be honest, everyone was a bit stingy on the rec’s. That said, however, there is exactly one comment that went Sedona Red, so I’m pleased to award TheRealRamona what I believe is her first CotG, for this possibly apocryphal anecdote on a side thread that started off being about crapping on Don Mattingly, if I’m not mistaken:

And yes, I did rec it, but mine was actually the fifth rec, so it was already Sedona Red by then. My sweetie gets the Comment of the Game fair and square.

Anyway. We can still win the series, and really, we should and we need to, but if you want to watch it, you’re gonna have to get up early. Zach Davies and Carlos Rodon face off tomorrow, which sounds, um, fun? First pitch is an ungodly 10:05am AZ time. I hope you can stop by, though if you’re in the Gameday Thread tomorrow for first pitch, I applaud you because there’s no way I’m going to be awake and ready for baseball at that hour. It’s been a long week.

As always, though, thanks for reading. And as always, go Diamondbacks!

UPDATE: Obligatory Scoreboard Watch

#tinybears beat the Rockies, unsurprisingly, 6-0.

Milwaukee absolutely stomped the Marlins, 16-1.

The Pirates did yeoman service against the Reds, coming back and beating them 7-5.

FTD is currently losing to San Francisco, 3-0, but it’s only the top of the 7th now, so there’s still time.