Phoenix.BloggersPub

Ubaldo Jimenez (23, RHP, 3-2, 4.03)

Livan Hernandez (32, RHP, 9-9, 4.86)

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And we place our icon carefully on a shelf in the cupboard, ready for the next time we need St. Penelope to wield her divine powers. All being well, that shouldn’t be this weekend. The Rockies are on course for their best season since 1995…but that just means anything better than a handful of wins above .500. They’re also pretty mediocre when you take them out of Coors, going 29-39 on the road.

Here’s an interesting quote, something I wrote back on July 21st when things looked grim: “This is, basically, the same team who went 16-11 in April - and then, 16-12 in May. No reason they can’t turn it around and go 16-12 in August and 16-11 in September.” And now, we find ourself on the last day of August with our record this month so far of…16-11. It’s almost enough to make me wish they’d lose tonight. Almost. [Meanwhile, amused by Diamondhacks’ expections in the same thread, to wit: “I think it’s unlikely they’ll make the playoffs. Your personal expectation of wins in the mid eighties is, IMO, in considerable jeopardy.” That is - surprise, surprise - looking wildly inaccurate, unless we go 7-20 the rest of the way…]

Status uncertain for this one. I’m still at work, waiting for Mrs. SnakePit to get out of her employment [she swapped shifts, so is there till 9:30pm or so]. Doing a spot of overtime in the meantime, but should at least have a small, Yahoo scorebox window open in one corner. However, not sure if I’ll be doing much reporting tomorrow (depends if the hotel has wifi) so I hereby put snakecharmer on notice for starting tomorrow’s Gameday Thread!

The 30 GM’s: Steve Kerr Of The Phoenix Suns
RealGM - Marion,Illinois,USA
The Phoenix Suns have been among the league’s elite for the past three seasons, but now they have handed the reins of the franchise over to a rookie General…

Suns promote Del Negro to assistant GM
Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA
Phoenix, AZ (Sports Network) - The Phoenix Suns named Vinny Del Negro assistant general manager Tuesday, promoting him from his previous position as the…

Ok, look I know that Peter King is a good NFL writer and I enjoy reading a lot of his work; with his Monday Morning Quarterback column as a must read each week if you are a fan of the NFL. I also know his editors at CNNSI.com probably put him up to his recent […]

Record: 75-60. Change on last season: +11. Pace: 90-72
Playoff odds: 58.1%. Playoff Magic Number: 26

Quote of the day: “I never say no to nothing about pitching” — Livan Hernandez

Today’s reading comes from the Book of BoMel, Chapter 135:

1. And St. Penelope of the Cross did slay the unicorn of many colors
2. [Though it got a bit dodgy at the end there, for a minute, and she really needs to have a word with her disciple, John of the Cross]
3. But Joe of the Green Valley did not fail us, and stood firm in the face of the unbelievers from the sea
4. And there was much rejoicing in the land of the never-ending sun
5. Albeit with the consumption of large quantities of soothing digestive products

My, that was fun. In the same way walking away from the Minnesota bridge collapse without a scratch would have been “fun”, i.e. mostly because you look back and think how much worse it could have been. I have to say, I was impressed with the rallying power of the rainbow unicorn they wield over at Gaslamp Ball. While, of course, not able to defeat St. Penelope, eventually going down in a flailing, squealing heap of tangled, brightly-colored limbs, it was a bloody good fight.

At first, it looked like all that would be left of the unicorn would be the components for a novelty hat-stand, as Arizona’s dormant offense awoke, moving out to an 8-0 lead. MarKKK Reynolds turned into Mark RBIeynolds: he opened the scoring by crushing a pitch from Evil Chris Young into the bleachers, a two-run shot among the longest homers ever hit at Petco [though a couple of feet shorter than the one he hit at Turner Field recently]. After we loaded the bases in the fifth, and chased Evil Chris Young, Stephen Drew walked to make it 3-0. And RBIeynolds went 0-2, then fouled off five pitches and took a ball before going to the wall on the ninth pitch for a three-RBI double.

When Clark, Drew and Snyder hit back-to-back-to-back doubles to open the seventh, it seems like piling on - little did we realise those would turn out to be crucial insurance. Davis got the first two in the seventh…and then things utterly fell apart. Getting the seven remaining outs required: nine hits, a walk, a plunking, three wild pitches, seven-eights of the lead evaporating, the tying run at second base, and Hudson and Upton colliding in the outfield. Oh, and Valverde striking out the Padres round a home-run to make it a one-run game.

Losing would have been an utter disaster, but coming through it with a W is, somehow…strengthening. If our bullpen must meltdown and get tagged for seven hits in 2.1 innings, coming into the game with a seven-run lead is a good time to do it. Certainly, I do not have any confidence in either Famine or Pestilence at the moment: they both have decent velocity but lack the movement or control to make them effective. Still, rosters expand tomorrow, and so we’ll get some fresh arms in the bullpen.

That overshadowed a performance by Doug Davis which was, for the first six innings, as dominant a start as we’ve seen for him. He allowed only two hits and a walk as he took a shutout into the seventh, and left with an 8-1 lead, though his overall line was not helped by the bullpen allowing both inherited runners to score after he was in the dugout. Still, he got his 12th win, tying a career high: his record for the past four seasons has been remarkably consistent (12-11, 11-11, 11-11, 12-12), but with probably five or six more starts to go, he should do better. In the first half, opponents batted .300 off him, but since then, it’s .217, and his walks/9 IP are also down to 3.65 from 5.03 before the break. His ERA is only .47 lower, but that is no longer utterly at odds with his other stats.

A phenomenal Gameday Thread, shattering all records and cruising past 400 into “automatically collapse posts into threads” mode for the first time. Wow. It was a lot of fun, covering everything from gay superheroes to the origins of the word “chav”, though again, the happy ending probably made a lot of difference! Thanks to LucaMaz3, unnamedDBacksfan, soco, DbacksSkins, snakecharmer, batster, hotclaws, Peachy, VIII, seton hall snake pit, andrewinnewyork, bjn, 4CornersFan, TwinnerA, singaporedbacksfan and icecoldmo for a board-busting performance. Definitely much more to talk about when your team is a bloop single from blowing an eight-run lead!

Gameday Graph

[Click graph to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Mark Reynolds, +27.0%
God-emperor of suck: Chris Snyder, -10.5%
Honorary “Well done!”: Doug Daivs, +25.5%

It’s an interesting graph, mostly because, even in the depths of the meltdown, the Padres’ chances of victory never got past 20.6% - after Slaten’s wild pitch put the tying run on second in the bottom of the eighth. I don’t know about you, but it felt an awful lot worse than that at the time. Of course, it’s all relative: after Davis got the first two outs in the seventh, San Diego only had a 0.2% chance of victory. So, I guess, increasing that a hundred-fold probably explains why it was such a nerve-wracking experience.

About a month ago, Andy Kamenetzky got in touch with me through my pal RaisingZona, about an article he was writing for ESPN the Magazine. The story was his search for a new NFL team to love, since he was left heart broken as a child when the Cardinals moved from St. Louis […]

The 30 GM’s: Steve Kerr Of The Phoenix Suns
RealGM - Marion,Illinois,USA
The Phoenix Suns have been among the league’s elite for the past three seasons, but now they have handed the reins of the franchise over to a rookie General…

Suns promote Del Negro to assistant GM
Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA
Phoenix, AZ (Sports Network) - The Phoenix Suns named Vinny Del Negro assistant general manager Tuesday, promoting him from his previous position as the…

The Arizona Diamondbacks don’t play the Colorado Rockies every week; it just seems that way. This home stand starts with a three game series against the Rockies. Like the Arizona Diamondbacks the Rockies are made up of a core of really good young position players who have had a good run in the second half of the season. Tonight’s game marks the 13th regular season game these two teams will play this year. They will have two more at Chase Field after tonight and then the Diamondbacks will travel to Denver the last weekend of the regular season to end the year the way they began with a three game series at Coors Field. Besides the 13 meetings they have had during the regular season the two teams also met for 4 games in Spring Training meaning that they are very familiar with each other. So after this many contests, is there anything that they haven’t seen before?

Team Canada won their third game in a row against Team Russia in a convincing rout 6-2.
Kyle Turris scored the second goal on a power play midway through the first period and team Canada scored three goals in ten shots forcing the Russian coach to pull their goaltender. So far, Turris has three goals, two […]

And DBacks Daily pulls out a come-from-behind win to take the thread!! The 5th Starter was one vote behind, and Bullpen Session was one behind that. Thank you to all who voted, your input made a difference.

I’ve got to run this morning but I’ll edit this story later with some summaries and thoughts. For now, to get you all started, here’s a list of the news of the day:

• AP recap
  
• MLB.com recap
  
• MLB.com notes (from yesterday evening)
  
• EV Tribune recap
  
• EV Tribune notes
  
• AZ Republic recap
  
• AZ Republic notes
  
• Roller-coaster ride in the NL
  
• Pitch and catch with Bryan Price

Thank God the preseason is over! No more pointless games, no more risk of injury, no more 3rd string players that can’t run, pass, or tackle. Most importantly no more preseason broadcasters! If you were like me you had to stay away from sharp objects while listening to the analyst on channel 15 in Phoenix […]