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I hope you had a pleasant off-day - I got my baseball fix hate-watching the Dodgers for a bit, though eventually abandoned that in favor of last night’s crappy shark movie on SyFy, Frenzy. Let’s just say, I ended up cheering for the sharks, in what turned into another session of hate-watching. This evening, it’s Nightmare Shark, which appears to be a fish-flavored version of Nightmare on Elm Street. Let’s just hope, by the time I have to turn it on - probably around 9:30pm, to allow me to fast-forward through the commercials - the D-backs have are significantly on the road toward at least maintaining their current game and a half lead in the West.
For the purposes of your scoreboard watching, the Rockies have kicked off a four-game series against the Braves in Atlanta - and, remarkably, managed to stop Ronald Acuña from hitting a lead-off run without feeling the need to hit him with a 95+ mph fastball. What is this sorcery? At the time of writing, Colorado is 2-1 up in the fifth inning. The Dodgers are idle, and start a series against the Mariners in Seattle tomorrow night. They may be without Yasiel Puig, who was suspended for two games for his role in the fracas the other night: he has the right to appeal. Nick Hundley was fined, and Eric Hinske received his customary five-game suspension in such things...
Clay Buchholz starts for Arizona, having taken his first loss since May last time out, the 3-0 loss in Cincinnati. He didn’t pitch badly - indeed, he lowered his ERA fractionally, to 2.67. But after three consecutive taco-producing Buchholz starts by the offense, the runs did not run. He has got the W the two times he has previously faced the Padres, the last time allowing three earned runs over 5.2 innings on July 29. We’re going up against a largely unknown quantity in Jacob Nix, who has one MLB start to his name. However, that did see him blank those Phillies for six innings. I will therefore set the over under on the first “Why can’t we hit this rookie?” whine, at about four outs.