Diamondbacks 1, Giants 4: That One F***ing Play

The first road game for the Diamondbacks happened to be the first home game for the Giants. Both of these teams attended the other’s Opening Day, kinda like when you were a kid if someone invited you to their birthday party, you were morally obligated to invite that person to yours. Or so I’ve heard *sobs*.

Taijuan Walker made his second start for the Diamondbacks. In the opening frame he gave up a leadoff double to Denard Span that didn’t amount to anything in the runs column. However, a slip of control lead to a scary moment when he hit Buster Posey with a 94 MPH Fastball. Posey had to leave the game, but walked off the field and never lost consciousness. As of writing there was no update on his status.

Walker had a bit of a tight rope act going in a few innings, but it bit hit him hard in a few self-inflicted ways. He walked two batters to load the bases, but he had Matt Moore, the opposing pitcher up. He hit a dribbler up the first base line. What should have been at the very minimum an out at first with only one run scored turned into a Rube Goldberg machine of sadness.

(And to twist the knife, that’s Giants announcer audio. May as well jump into it)

Actually to call that a series defensive miscue would be disingenuous. That was Dadaist art, designed to offend and ultimately kill off defensive plays all together. That was GG Allin pooping on stage. That was an extreme version of the form, just to see if there are any limits beyond the outskirts of society. Taijuan Walker and Jeff Mathis were not on the Diamondbacks last year, and I hope they bring more “Brian Eno holding up cards with random musical directions” to the team this season.

So the Diamondbacks are down 3-0 because of that. They got one closer in the next half inning through Yasmany hittin’ himself a dinger.

Walker lasted into the 6th, and left after giving up a leadoff beating-the-shift infield single to Jarrett Parker. His outing can be described as “Well other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” His final line was 5.0+ IP, 2 ER, 4 BB, 2 K.

Walker gave way to Randall Delgado, who pitched the rest of the 6th without giving up a run, but a leadoff double by Hunter Pence in the 7th turned into a sac fly to increase the Giants lead to 4-1.

The possible, maybe, I don’t know, retaliation for the Posey hit came in the 8th when Matt Moore hit David Peralta. Annoyingly, the Diamondbacks couldn’t capitalize, which would have struck a blow of logic against a dumb baseball code thing, and, more importantly, might have helped them win this game.

Chris Owings had a leadoff double in the 9th, but the next three batters all got outs and the Diamondbacks lost only their second game of the year.

Of Merit: Tomas, +2.9%

Bad: Walker, -14%

Just one of those games that happens. They’ll be back at it tomorrow with Robbie Ray facing Jeff Samardzija.