Phoenix.BloggersPub

Speaking of the Valle Luna party bus and football promos, this week Cosmopolitan online named Valle Luna as one of the hot spots for Hottie Spotting in the Phoenix area!
HOTTIE SPOTTING
Locals, college kids and tourists can’t get enough of the Mexican food at Valle Luna Mexican Restaurant; you’re sure to spot some fellas noshing on […]

Record: 89-70. Change on last season: +14. Pace: 91-71
Playoff odds: 84.4%. Playoff Magic Number: 2. Or maybe 3.

Quote of the day: “A lot went through my mind. I kinda went back to the fact that I have to do the best I can for the team. Any time I am given the opportunity I’m going to jump at it. It just ended up a day earlier than I expected this time” — Micah Owings

We rolled the dice today, opting to start Owings instead of ace Brandon Webb. And, so far at least, the decision has come up double-six. Pwnings pitched shutout ball into the seventh, before a rain delay, backing up his complete game shutout in his previous outing. He allowed only four hits, walked none and the Pirates only got one runner into scoring position while he was on the mound. In his past two starts, he has now thrown 15.2 shutout innings, and allowed only six hits and no walks. Admittedly, the Giants and Pirates are hardly playoff contenders, but if serious consideration isn’t being given to starting him ahead of Hernandez, should we reach the Promised Land, I’ll want to know why.

Oh, and did I mention he also went 4-for-4? In the past 37 seasons, only ten pitchers have had four hit games. Micah Owings has now had two in six weeks. Unless he does any pinch-hitting in Colorado - and I really wouldn’t bet against that - he’ll finish batting .339 on the season. Just three pitchers with 60-plus plate appearances have done any better than that since 1958: Mike Hampton (.344 in 2002); Orel Hershiser (.356 in 1993); and Catfish Hunter (.350 in 1971). Most remarkably of all, Micah’s OPS of 1.050 is the best by a full-time pitcher since Charlie Hickman for the 1899 Boston Beaneaters.To put that into context, it’s heading towards the same ballpark as Ruth’s 1919: the Babe had an OPS of 1.113, and an ERA under three in fifteen starts.

There were actually other players taking part - not that we really needed them, with our pitcher driving in three runs. Stephen Drew got the game off on the right foot, homering in the top of the first, and ended with three hits and three RBI. With any luck, Drew might finally be getting that hot streak we’ve been anticipating all season. Augie Ojeda also reached safely three times, on two hits and a walk. He has hit safely in twelve of the last thirteen games, and is batting .381 (16-for-42, with a BB:K ratio of 8:1) in that time. Less impressive was Chris Young who will be glad to get out of Pittsburgh, having gone 1-for-13 with four K’s. Pestileñce, Bigfoot and the Petit Unit tidied up after the rain delay, leaving most of our A-bullpen rested and ready for action over the weekend.

Thanks to the Gameday Threaders, who kept things rolling on deep into the night, mulling over results elsewher (basically, all our rivals won) and the possibilities to come. Present were Ben, britdback, johngordonma, Adam, unnamedDBacksfan, Devin, DBACKS KICK ARSE, peeklay, TwinnerA, kalum, andrewinnewyork, Englishdback, singaporedbacksfan, soco, Stile4aly, DbacksSkins, Wimb, azdb7, Peachy, Diamondhacks, snakecharmer, icecoldmo, cj060896, Red Army, seton hall snake pit and batster. That may be the most people in a thread ever.

Gameday Graph

[Click graph to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Micah Owings (pitching), +22.2%
God-emperor of suck: Chris Snyder, -7.4%
Honorary goodness: Stephen Drew, +15.8% and Micah Owings (batting), +15.4%

With that win under our belt, the team moves on to Colorado (pausing only for some rookie hazing, though I’ve yet to see any pics of Upton in a baby outfit). The re-arrangement means the match-ups are as follows:

• Webb (ERA+ 156) vs. Francis (114)
• EdGon (100) vs. Redman (111)
• Davis (111) vs. Jimenez (105)

Initially, it seems that today strongly favors us, but Webb’s struggles against the Rockies (a 6.47 ERA in five starts this season) have been well documented. At first, I think that might be because the high altitude in Colorado diminished the effectiveness of breaking pitches like his sinker: overall in his career, he has a 4.40 ERA, the highest of any venue with more than three career starts. However, his three starts at Chase this year facing Colorado haven’t gone well either: 21 IP, 14 ER on 21 hits and ten walks.

I like our chances on Saturday better. Redman’s ERA+ above is based just on his four games this month for the Rockies. If you include his stint at the start of the year with the Braves, where he sucked totally, his ERA+ slumpts to 52. He has admittedly been a lot better with Colorado, but that’s less than 15 innings, and he’s pitching on short rest. He’s probably also among the worst players ever to earn the label ‘All-Star’, getting into the 2006 game for Kansas, despite an ERA at the time of 5.27.

Sunday…well, hopefully we will have a playoff spot wrapped up by that stage, at the very least. But if not, Davis will be called upon to pitch the most important game of his career. According to Steve Gilbert, Davis think he figured out what caused the struggles early in September: his shoulder flew open, dragging his arm, which let hitters see the ball better. And he did pitch five innings last time, looking fairly good and settling down after a rocky first. Let’s just hope he doesn’t have a Rockie first on Sunday.

One more win. That’s virtually all we need for the playoffs. Just one in the series at Colorado, and we should be good to go. Given that sole victory, here’s how the math breaks down on that. One win gives us 90, and two keeps the Rockies at 89, so they’re no longer relevant. The Padres would all but have to sweep Milwaukee over the weekend to take the title. Two wins ties them with us on 90, but in that scenario, we would probably be NL West champions because of the season series victory over them. There’s one exception, which I’ll get to in a moment: otherwise, they must sweep.

Then, there’s the East. The good thing there is, whichever of the Mets and Phillies does best over the weekend will be the NL East champions. This eliminates them from the wild-card race, and they are no longer of interest to Arizona. Both are on 87 wins, so if both teams sweep, there would be a tie with Arizona (and possibly the Padres, if they end up on 90 wins too - the exception referred to above) for the wild-card, and also a tie for the NL East and perhaps NL West too. God knows how MLB would sort that one out, but it would seem to require delaying the Division Series until next Friday. At least the Rockies win eliminated the possibility of a five-way tie.

So, to sum up. If Arizona takes one game over the weekend, then one Mets or Phillies loss guarantees us playoff baseball. At least, I think that’s the case. We were chewing over all this in the Gameday Thread yesterday, if anyone is interested in more details. Tylenol sold separately, shall we say: the possibilities are quite mind-bending. But it’s great that, 98% of the way through the season, seven teams, almost half the National League, have a playoff spot possible, but nobody has one guaranteed. Is this the closest finish ever in the National League? It certainly promises to be one hell of a final weekend: you might want to stock up on all the soothing medication you can find.

The Phoenix Coyotes lose in the shootout against the Dallas Stars 3-2 Thursday night. With one game remaining in the preseason, the record for the Coyotes is 3-1-3; two of the overtime losses came in the shootout period.
Last night’s efforts was not due for a lack of trying. The Coyotes fired 28 goals […]

(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)
Now this is the one that we’ve been waiting for;
It’s the first matchup for Arizona Cardinals new Head Coach Ken Whisenhunt against his former team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers roll into town with a perfect record of 3-0 after a thorough beat down of the San Francisco 49ers last Sunday […]

The Suns have had a long history of being a team that will “make the deal”. This theoretical deal, of course, is the deal where they will make a big trade in order to get better, or to fix the team. From the deal sending Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry and Andrew Lang to Philly for […]

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Credit: Tim Soter
If you don’t own Low’s 2007 release Drums and Guns (Sub Pop), the band is offering some nice incentive by making Murderer, one of the best songs on the album (maybe the year?) available as a download at its MySpace page.
And fear not, quasi-audiophiles: It’s a 192 kbps file.
Low was on my […]

No one wants to even consider the D-backs not making the playoffs around here but if they fall apart it won’t be the worst ever or for that matter the possible worst of the year.
Baseball Prospectus put together a study of the worst collapses in baseball history and the information is very interesting […]

Daniel had been to Ra Sushi a couple of times and really liked it so he wanted us to go there for lunch.

With the early start this morning (and me being too busy to get this up before o’early thirty), I’ll combine the news from today and tomorrow (since many articles are already online) into today’s feature. Anything extra tomorrow we’ll just post in comments, and if it’s big I’ll edit it in.

Bonus points for guessing the source of the title (without searching). It is apropos of our situation yesterday and today - yesterday our magic number stayed at 3, but today we only have three games left this regular season!! The win today reduces our magic number to 2. Two for three in Colorado… that’s just taking the series. They’ve done that all year. After today’s win, the guys should have some confidence back going to Denver.

Yesterday’s loss was tough.. not pretty by any count. Hernandez says he didn’t feel right after the rain delay, and Reynolds says they might be pressing. (Republic) Pittsburgh certainly showed up to play. (AP) The pressure is mounting (MLB.com) but there’s still time for recovery. (Tribune)

And today’s bounce back win was in typical Diamondback fashion - anybody, anytime. This time it was Micah Owings with the big game, 4 for 4 with 3 RBI and 6.1 shutout innings. (MLB.com) (All of today’s recaps focus on Owings: AP, Republic and Tribune.) Stephen Drew points out it helped to get on the board early, and Eric Byrnes calls the win “absolutely huge” and even agreed to use the phrase “must-win.”

Lots of other news today. Several articles about Webb being pushed back to start tomorrow in Colorado instead of lose him today in Pittsburgh. Cautious? Yes. Smart move? Yes. Webb’s 1-3 vs Colorado this season (and 0-1) in Coors Field but I like the caution; better to play him for more innings tomorrow even if is numbers aren’t great, because he’s our Ace no matter what. And Owings gave us a strong win today anyway. Hopefully the late scratch won’t mess with Webb’s preparation. He thinks it should be fine. Brandon Medders feels he learned from his travails this season. And clearly the Hairston trade worked in favor of the Padres this year. (Hairston had a 3-run double in tonight’s game in Milwaukee that, as of this writing, is the difference in the game.) But scouts still like Rosales and he could be up in the bullpen next season. Speaking of scouts, Mike Rizzo had a hand in 17 of the Diamondbacks playing in the bigs today. Talk about a big influence in team history..

Also today was, as expected, rookie hazing!! No photos found yet, but I’m on the hunt…

Other news around the league that affect the Diamondbacks: Diamondbacks go 0 for 4 in wild card coin flips. To further mess with your head, a 5-way tie is possible for the end of the season among the Mets, Phillies, Diamondbacks, Padres and Rockies. That’s as of this morning. Mets and Phillies are now tied for the NL East title, and the Diamondbacks have won, so a tie with Colorado is still possible with a sweep even if Colorado loses tonight. Further information on NLDS ticket sales was also released.

The rotation for the weekend seems to be lined up as Webb vs Francis, Gonzalez vs Redman, and Davis vs Jimenez. Conor Jackson and Justin Upton figure to start against the lefties.

Important Question: The Yahoo schedule says Saturday’s game is not going to be on TV for Arizonans (and probably only local Denver). Anybody know if this has changed due to playoff potential?? If it hasn’t yet, I say we mount an email campaign..