Today’s Lineups
Time, once again, for the Most Important Game™ in the Most Important Series of the Year™ – collect the set! Hyperbole aside, last night’s unexpected demolition job of Casey Mize in his Padres debut has made this one more a “nice to win” than a “must win” for the Diamondbacks. Worst case scenario, a loss would split the four-game series and leave us exactly in the same spot against the Padres as we were going in: one game up, and with the season series even. The plus side = four games fewer on the schedule for San Diego to overtake us. The down side = any tiebreaker will be determined at Petco, by the final series of the season from September 25-27.
A win would thus be helpful. It’d leave us three games clear of any team in the wild-card race, and additionally, give us a 6-4 advantage in the season series, with those three left to play. San Diego would therefore need to sweep Arizona at Petco to own the tiebreaker, if that were to come into operation. Oh, it’d also put the D-backs 7.5 games back of the Dodgers. That’s still some way, but considering Los Angeles were 14 games up less than a month ago, on July 8… You have to go back to June 14 to find their lead that small. But I won’t be getting excited until Fangraphs shows odds for them winning the division considerably less than the current 99.4%. Mind you, it was literally 100% a month ago.
A couple of thoughts on Mitch Bratt’s stellar performance last night. As already noted, at 81, it was the highest Game Score by a pitcher his age or younger in franchise history. That broke a record which had stood for over 13 years, being set by Tyler Skaggs in 2013, when he threw eight shutout innings against the Rockies. Asterisk there, of course, with it being the Rockies. Though at the point, they were merely bad, rather than being Teh Suck. Also, Bratt struck out nine of the 24 batters he faced. That equaled his K total for the entire month of July, when he faced 85 batters. It made a strong case for why he should remain in the rotation when Michael Soroka returns. Over to you, Kohl Drake…
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