Diamondbacks 6, Blue Jays 0: Dbacks pick up easy series win

A quick first inning for both teams today in Toronto. The Diamondbacks went down in order, with Jarrod Dyson and Ketel Marte striking out in the inning. The Blue Jays faired a little better, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hitting a one out single. It ended with the same result, however, as Zach Greinke got Justin Smoak and Randal Grichuk to strike out swinging to end the inning.

Different story in the top of the second. After Peralta grounded out for the first out, Christian Walker drew, well, a walk, and then moved to second thanks to a ground out from Ildemaro Vargas. Nick Ahmed kept him moving next batter up with a single that brought Walker home to score. Alex Avila followed it up with a walk to put runners on first and second with two outs, but Kevin Cron wasn’t able to keep things going and grounded out, ending the inning. 1-0 Diamondbacks

Arizona started to break things open in the third inning. Dyson lead off with a single, and he then stole second. That let him get to third on an infield single off the bat of Tim Locastro. He then scored on a Marte single that also sent Locastro to second. Peralta was up next and doubled, bringing home Locastro. That put Marte on third and Perlta on second with no body out. Walker struck out, but Vargas walked to load the base for Ahmed. He hit a sac fly to score Marte, extending the lead further. However, that was all they managed that inning, as Alex Avila flew out, ending the inning. 4-0 Diamondbacks

Meanwhile, Zach Greinke wasn’t letting his stiff neck from his last start get in his way. After the one out single to Guerrero Jr., he sat the next nine down in order, before giving up a walk to Justin Smoak with one out in the bottom of the fourth. Even that baserunner didn’t last long, though. Grichuk was the next batter, and he lined one back to Greinke, who caught it and then tossed it back to first to double up the runner.

The bottom of the fifth was a little more of a struggle for him. With one out, he walked Brandon Drury, which should merit Greinke for some sort of award along the lines of Razzie for Best Actor. Teoscar Hernandez then singled, to put runners on first and second, one out. Greinke recovered, though, and got Rowdy Tellez to ground out and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to strike out swining for the final out of the inning.

He kept things going in the sixth inning, working around a two out single to Justin Smoak to put another zero on the board. He faced one batter in the seventh but gave up a triple to Gurriel Jr., and was pulled in favor of Andrew Chafin. He struck out his one batter, Tellez, and was in turn pulled in favor of Yoshi Hirano, who struck out both Teoscar Hernandez and Drury to end the inning.

That was pretty much the ball game. Alex Avila and Kevin Cron both added solo home runs in sixth and ninth innings, respectively, to give the Diamondbacks their final lead of 6-0. After Hirano, Matt Andriese and Zack Godley both pitched scoreless innings to close the game out.

Greinke ran away with the lead as far as WPA% goes today with 21.3%. The only player to even come close was Nick Ahmed with an even 10%. On the flip side, only a couple of players were in the negative and only barely. Cron got the worst of it with -4.1%, followed by Vargas with -2.5% and Walker just barely missed breaking even with -0.4%.

269 comments with DC and Rockstarr providing most of them with 69 and 63 comments each. Not many showed up today, but those that did were:

AZPerson, AzDbackfanInDc, BobDolio, DBacksEurope, GuruB, Imstillhungry95, Jack Sommers, Johnneu, Justin27, MrMrrbi, NikT77, Rockkstarr12, Schilling2001, Smurf1000, asteroid,

No comment got more than two recs, and one of those was a bad joke on my part about Willie Nelson, so no COTD today. Robbie Ray takes the mound against Clayton Richard tomorrow morning as the Diamondbacks go for the sweep. It’s a goddawful early 10:07am start time tomorrow, so grab some brunch and mimosas and see ya then!

Updated to include the correct start time for tomorrow’s game