Today’s Lineups
A semi-random stop over for the D-backs in St. Louis, on their way to Washington. This is the make-up of a game which was rained out at Busch Stadium on June 25. Much to the ire of Paul Sewald, who clearly felt there was enough warning for the game time to have been moved up, and the cancellation avoided. It’d be nice if he successfully closed out a save opportunity in this afternoon’s game. A win would definitely be helpful, since we go into this game in sole possession of the third wild-card, but by the narrowest of margins over the Cardinals and Pirates (who are off today). Victory would put us 1.5 up on St. Louis and a game over Pittsburgh.
Advertisement
The bullpen looks in a better state today. The blowout win yesterday allowed Torey Lovullo to run out debutant Gerardo Carrillo for an extended spell – his 42 pitches was a season high. With a 12-run lead in the ninth, he then turned to Ildemaro Vargas, who became the first Arizona position player to pitch in a win. And, as far as I can tell, the first player to pitch the day after having a walk-off hit. I’m still digging into this, mostly from the angle of the surprisingly high (218!) number of pitchers to get walk-off hits. There’s only one of those after 1994 though: Randy Keisler of the Reds did so in the 14th inning of a game against Washington in 2005. More on all that some off-day.
I won’t be about for the end of this. Going off with Mrs. SnakePit, the SnakePitette and her teenage stepdaughter, SurlySnakette, to the Titanic exhibition in Scottsdale. Which explains the home-page picture: it is not intended as a visual representation of Sewald’s season trajectory as our closer. Curious to see what it’s like. Hopefully, considerably shorter than the 195 minutes of James Cameron’s version (I was largely on #TeamIceberg for that one). Pretty much all I know about the disaster, comes from the movie. Which I’m sure was an entirely factual and accurate representation of events. Report to follow tomorrow, I imagine.
