Saturday, April 19, 2014

Game of the Day (4/18/14)

Diamondbacks 4, Dodgers 2 (12). Wade Miley and the 4-14 Diamondbacks taking on Zack Greinke and the 10-6 Dodgers. That's a seven-game margin between the two teams, which is awfully large for this early in the season.

Greinke allowed a hit and two walks in the top of the first, but a 5-4-3 double play came amid the baserunners and helped him elude the possibility of scoring. Miley also walked a pair of hitters, and also exploited a double play to get out of the inning. Neither pitcher allowed a baserunner in the second, and both allowed exactly one in the third, both of whom would be stranded at first.

The pitchers diverged somewhat in the fourth, as Greinke retired the Arizona hitters 1-2-3 while Miley allowed a single to Matt Kemp and walked Scott Van Slyke before ending the inning. Greinke saw AJ Pollock reach on an error in the fifth, but allowed no other baserunners, and Miley posted a perfect frame, continuing to match his counterpart zero for zero.

Greinke posted the first positive number of the day in the sixth, as Miguel Montero hit a two-out homer to give Arizona the game's first lead. Miley worked around a walk to Hanley Ramirez in the bottom of the inning; Jamey Wright relieved Greinke and allowed only a two-out Pollock single in the seventh, which meant that Van Slyke's leadoff homer in the bottom of the inning was sufficient to retie the score at one. JJ Putz replaced Miley immediately following the homer and retired the rest of the Dodgers in order.

Chris Withrow was spotless in the top of the eighth, while Brad Ziegler allowed two walks (one of them intentional to Adrian Gonzalez after a groundout advanced the first runner) but nothing else. Withrow remained on the mound in the top of the ninth, and started the inning with a free pass to Montero. Tony Campana ran for Montero and promptly stole second, moved to third on a groundout, and scored the go-ahead run on a wild pitch; I think you could safely classify that as a "manufactured run." Two more walks spelled the end of Withrow's stint in the game, and Brandon League came on to end the inning with a pair of groundouts.

Addison Reed entered for the ninth and promptly surrendered the lead on a one-out homer by Juan Uribe, sending the game to extras. League allowed a Gerardo Parra single and saw Paul Goldschmidt reach on catcher's interference in the tenth, but Montero's replacement behind the plate, Tuffy Gosewich, hit into a double play to smother the rally. Ramon Delgado permitted only a two-out Ramirez single in the bottom of the tenth, but that was enough to prompt a relief appearance from Joe Thatcher, who yielded a single to Gonzalez before getting a forceout from pinch hitter Dee Gordon. Chris Perez threw a perfect eleventh, and Thatcher duplicated that effort in the bottom of the inning.

The top of the twelfth started with a Pollock double. Perez then plunked pinch hitter Cliff Pennington, and Parra bunted the runners to second and third. Aaron Hill followed with a single to bring both of them home. That set up a save opportunity, but with the Arizona bullpen largely depleted, the option they landed on was Trevor Cahill. Normally a starting pitcher, Cahill has lost his first four appearances this year, and badly; he entered the game at 0-4, 9.17, with an unsettling 17/13 K/BB ratio.

Despite his ill-omened early-season performance, Cahill was perfect in the bottom of the twelfth, securing the first save of his MLB career and reducing his ERA all the way to 8.68.

See, all that has to happen for a team off to a terrible start to beat one that's playing well is a walk/steal/groundout/wild pitch run, followed by a save from a pitcher who allows a run an inning! That wasn't so difficult, now was it, Diamondbacks?

No comments:

Post a Comment