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The Arizona Diamondbacks were stymied by a bullpen day from the Los Angeles Angels, and it had the offense resembling its depressed May form as opposed to the high octane June variant. The bats were mostly quiet until some noise in top of the ninth with two outs. Felix Pena took the start for the opposition. It was his first MLB start in his 39th appearance, and he put up a respectable four innings of two hit baseball. Arizona got to him early in the game when David Peralta drove in Jon Jay on a fielder’s choice in the first. The Freight Train was responsible for driving in two of the four D’backs runs, the second being a two out double which scored Jake Lamb in the fifth. Outside of Peralta’s performance tonight, Arizona only had four other hits to go along with six base on balls resulting in eight men being stranded on base. Arizona struck out a whopping fourteen times in this one. Down to their final out of the game, Jon Jay singled and was brought for the second time in the game on a two run opposite field shot from Paul Goldschmidt. However, the two out rally was short lived after Jake Lamb flew out in the next at bat to end the game.
Matt Koch allowed the Angels to tie the game on their first at bat of the game when Ian Kinsler drove a 1-1 fastball over the outfield wall. Koch only allowed one hit afterwards until he unexpectedly unraveled in the fifth inning. He hit two batters and allowed a single in front of Mike Trout which is never a great recipe for success. Unsurprisingly, Trout came through with a single which drove in three runs, although he was only credited with two runs batted in. Kole Calhoun added Los Angeles’ final run of the game with a solo shot to open the bottom of the sixth.
Four Angels relievers, beyond Pena who took the start, combined to go five innings allowing only three hits and three runs.
ISH will be around after work for the full recap, so I will return to reading conspiracy theories about the fascinating mystery of D.B. Cooper in the meantime.