The theme of the night? Cold Beers and Cheeseburgers. Right from the jump, the Snakepit knew we were walking into a 3-hour infomercial when Bert and Bob greeted us from their improvised booth high above the left field grass. Such is life when your team is nowhere near the playoff race at the beginning of August. While the topic of specialty cheeseburgers, frosty beverages, and monstrous desserts would be an interesting diversion for Bert, Bob, and the Pitters to discuss during the game, it wouldn’t lessen the sour taste in our mouths if we got another stinker from the offense or a bad outing from the Milk Man.
Fortunately, neither of those happened. Gallen was inefficient, especially early, but he did get his footing after the third inning and more or less cruised for a Quality Start against a struggling Rockies offense. Zac was running his pitch count up (55 pitches) during the first 3 innings, and to me, it looked like he just wasn’t getting anywhere with his curveball (again). In the first 3 innings, the curve was his most used pitch, being thrown 16 times. Only 4 of those ended up in the zone and the Rockies swung and made contact on all 4. His other 12 curves missed the zone and only induced one swing. In the next 3 innings, he only threw 43 pitches and only had 1 walk and 1 bloop double of a base hit. He threw the curve 3 times total in those innings. A couple years ago, I never would have believed that Zac would lose his curveball. At this point, it appears that he certainly has.
The offense has been struggling in critical situations for the last month, but tonight they were able to make the most of their opportunities to make this game a laugher. The Rockies and D-Backs actually had the same amount of baserunners in this game: each team had 6 hits and 4 free passes (either via walk or HBP), but the Snakes did a better job stringing hits together and getting the big hits when it mattered. Blaze accounted for the first four D-Backs runs himself, getting a bases loaded double and an oppo taco in his first two at bats. Corbin added a 2-run dong on a ball that I’m pretty sure would’ve reached orbit if the roof had been open. It wasn’t a total team effort on offense, the bottom third combined for an 0-10 performance, but when you’re getting dingers and hits in critical situations, that doesn’t matter as much. Overall, it was good to see some success with RISP and Blaze go full inferno to earn this win tonight, but I’m not positive how sustainable this will be.
Win Probability and Box Score
The cold beers and cheeseburgers, and generally good showing from the D-Backs, caused a rather raucous GDT. A total of 312 comments at time of publishing and quite a few Sedona red whatever-shade-of-pinkish comments to choose from, though precious few were actually game-related. Dano commented late how it may be difficult to find COTG, and while I would have enjoyed pasting some Clint Hurdle slander below, the evening’s most Rec’d comment belonged to Jim:
The Diamondbacks face the Rockies in the second game of this series tomorrow with a 5:10pm first pitch Arizona time. E-Rod will be on the hill for the Snakes and he’ll be opposed by 24 year-old righty Bradley Blalock who is 1-3 with a 7.68 ERA. You’ll have to bring your own cheeseburgers tomorrow, but it should be fun all the same.