Record: 57-54. Pace: 83-79. Change on last season: -4.

It's official. The Dodgers have suddenly vaulted their way towards the top, and are now located among my three most hated teams. I'm still working on the exact specific position, but if they continue to - and I'm sorry, but there's not really another word for it - fellate Ramirez in the manner seen this afternoon, then the Yankees could end up with a run for their money.

A meaningless home-run this afternoon was apparently deemed worthy of a curtain-call; I don't know who is worse, the fans for demanding it, or Mandy for giving them one. I've seen it attributed to various coaches [Landry, Lombardi, etc.], but the appropriate phrase for Ramirez is, "Act like you've been there before." You didn't win the World Series. You didn't clinch a playoff spot. It was a solo homer, in the fifth inning, and you were already leading. Billy Buckner still qualifies as a rookie pitcher, f'heavens sake. So whoop-de-doo. You're on a second-place team, traded there because you made such a complete ass of yourself, that Boston was willing to pay LA $7m for you to leave. Go out there, put your head down and play.

Give the Dodgers credit though: their offense showed up. Ours - outside of Stephen Drew - didn't. Doug Davis didn't show up either, or at least, not the one who took a perfect game into the seventh inning last time out. He went from the best outing of his time with Arizona, to the worst, being unceremoniously yanked off the mound before completing two innings for the first time ever in his career. Six hits, two walks and five earned runs was the final line, with only 25 strikes in the 47 pitches that he threw, as eight out of thirteen batters faced reached safely.

Initially, it looked like this one was going to be a slugfest. After the Dodgers scored twice in the first, we came back to tie the game on RBI singles by Davis [yep, we were surprised by that too!] and Drew. But Los Angeles scored three more in the bottom of the second, chasing Davis, and Johnson settled down, retiring the next eight Diamondbacks' batters, before Drew homered and Hudson walked, to bring the tying run to the plate. That ended Johnson's day, and the Dodgers bullpen shut out Arizona for the remaining 4.2 innings, with only three singles and a walk to show for our efforts.

The bullpen was forced into mop-up duty, with mixed results. Buckner and Rosales performed admirably, combining for 4.1 innings of one-run ball. However, Qualls and Rauch were less effective: Each allowed three hits in their inning of work, with Qualls allowing one run and Rauch his first two in an Arizona jersey. Pretty much an irrelevance at that stage, though it leaves our relief corps somewhat thin for the upcoming series against the Pirates: I'm hopeful we won't need to use them quite as much in the next couple of days, what with Haren and Webb starting tomorrow and Tuesday.

The only real bright point was Stephen Drew having a three-hit game, including his 13th homer. After Mark Reynolds, our birthday boy, struck out for the third time in a row, as well as having a poor day with the glove, it was decided that a swift alteration of the birthday cake was necessary. The word "Mark" was therefore stricken from the record [or dessert, at least], and ingeniously replaced with the word "Drew." For those who missed the Gameday Thread, this was the result. You may need to squint a bit. :-)

Romero did have two hits, raising an interesting question. When Justin Upton comes back, should we move Romero to center-field and bench Young for a bit? Since returning to the roster on July 5 - basically a month ago - Romero has a line of .295/.318/.429, with seven K's in 63 at-bats. In comparison, over the same time, Chris Young is hitting .211/.269/.368, with 34 strikeouts in 95 at-bats. Romero simply puts together better at-bats, and is capable of fouling off good pitches in the hope of getting a mistake. The Dodgers exposed Young's frailties ruthlessly, and the results this series showed it. Sixteen times he came to the plate: no hits, seven strikeouts and one solitary ball that left the infield.

A particularly weird play in the bottom of the third. With Loney at first, Berroa popped the ball up on the infield. Going up the line, he collided with Tracy who was coming down from first, knocking Chad's glove clean off his hand. He tried to catch the ball bare-handed, but dropped it; then threw to second, where it appeared Loney was signaled out. However, the official ruling was that Berroa was out on batter's interference, and Loney had to return to first. This appears to have been the correct call. According to the Baseball Field Guide, the fielder has the right of way when attempting to make a play on a batted ball, whether the interference is intentional or not, and the ball is dead at that moment, with other runners having to go back to the last base they touched prior to it.

[Click to enlarge, in new window]
Master of his domain: Stephen Drew, +17.0%
God-emperor of suck: Doug Davis, -40.4%
Dishonorable mention: Conor Jackson, -10.6%

Big thanks to soco and mrssoco for opening their house to us this afternoon, where Mrs. SnakePit and I were joined by kishi, mrskishi and Azreous. There was a tense moment after the TV decided to commit suicide, lemming-style - the mount falling off the wall, with the whole assembly coming close to crushing mrssoco. Miraculously, it suffered only superficial damage: Vizio TV's are clearly capable of taking a good pounding. But it was a lot of fun, and we're contemplating a repeat for the penultimate game of the season at the end of September, this time at SnakePit Towers.

Apart from the above, present in the online version of the Gameday Thread [that'd be the one without cake and plummeting domestic appliances] were unnamedDBacksfan, hotclaws, Wimb, AF DBacks Fanatic, 4 Corners Fan, hotchixsnake27, luckycc, snakecharmer, foulpole, TwinnerA, Snakebitten, Scrbl, AZWILDCATS, Turambar, britdback, Shums, srdmad, emilylovesthedbacks and AJforAZ.

You can never be too unhappy with a road-trip where you win seven out of ten. However, having gone 7-1 up until yesterday, I think most fans will be somewhat disappointed. Much as we hate to admit it, it's clear that the Dodgers made the move of the season in acquiring Ramirez - not least because, somehow, they're paying him less we are to Tony "4-for-26" Clark. We still possess the lead as we head into the final 51 games, and the next couple of weeks have the schedule definitely easing up: our next five series are all against sub-.500 teams. We face the Dodgers again at the end of the month: will we still be in first then? Fasten your seat-belts, people: it's going to be a bumpy ride...

Record: 54-52. Pace: 83-79. Change on last season: -4.

Well, that was certainly an exciting game. It marked the return of Evil Chris Young after surviving that hellacious line drive from Albert Pujols. Doug Davis, a survivor of his own right, was his counterpart on the bump. And the two of them ended up putting up quite a show. One was seven outs away from a show for the ages. In the end, though, one outfield play may have taken top billing from everything else.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. This started with what seemed like little optimism, as ECY struck out the side in both the first two innings, interrupted only by an Orlando Hudson single in the first. Granted, this team is extremely strikeout-prone, but it still seemed like a trip in the wrong direction. Young ultimately struck out seven the first time through the order, and the offense limped into the fifth with just two hits.

That was still two more hits than the Padres had to that point, however, because Doug Davis was pitching the game of his life. Working his changeup in peculiar spots in the count and keeping batters guessing by using his curve only occasionally, Davis squeaked through those five innings with no hits or walks allowed, and five strikeouts. His pitch count was manageable, and more importantly, the San Diego hitters showed no signs of being able to figure out the crafty left-hander.

ECY was chased after those five innings after hitting his 90-pitch limit on his first start back, and the Diamondbacks capitalized on his absence immediately. With one out, CoJack and Tony Clark both singled, putting runners on the corners. Reynolds reached on an error to score Jackson, Snyder walked to load 'em up, and Alex Romero tossed in two more runs with a base hit to center. Before another out was recorded and Hensley was finally pulled, all three of their runs had come around to score.

Bolstered by his strange, unfamiliar run support (although it would be silly to get too excited over another three-run "outburst"), Davis went back to work and set down the Padres in order in the sixth. Unfortunately, with two down in the seventh on his 93rd pitch, Davis left a 2-2 changeup that was supposed to be low and away over the plate, and Brian Giles smacked it to center for a base hit, ruining the unlikely perfect game and no-hitter in one fell swoop.

So all in all, it had been easy. Davis was spectacular, the offense just mediocre enough, and going into the Padre half of the eighth it was still a 3-0 game. That's when the heart attack part of the game started. Did Davis get a nice seat on the bench after his fabulous start? Nope, Melvin sent him back out to start the inning, despite being at 100 pitches, in line for the win and without any shot at immortality. Instead, he was left to fend off the wolves. He retired Kouzmanoff on a grounder, but then the wheels fell off as Davis completely hit the wall. He threw 19 more pitches to the next four hitters, but only six for strikes, as the bases were loaded on an infield hit and two walks. Only then did Melvin finally remove his starter, who still could not lose the game, but was in line to be stuck with a no decision. More importantly, the go-ahead run was at the plate in Jody Gerut, a situation that most certainly should not have occured.

Anyway, the situation was quickly dealt with, as Gameday accurately reveals:

-J Gerut flied out to right

And that was that. Okay, so it was more than a routine flyout. Gerut crushed a pitch into right-center, but only Petco and a fantastic basket catch about a foot short of the wall by Romero saved at least a bases-clearing double (and likely a grand slam in a number of parks) from completely changing the complexion of the game. Daron Sutton spent most of the top of the ninth in a quiet stupor, still in disbelief about the play. (Some would argue that it was an improvement, but there's already a thread devoted to that). Still, it was an exciting play and a fitting call, one that echoed the exuberant posts in the Gameday thread.

There was still another inning to be played, but it was largely inconsequential -- Grace accurately pointed out that the game had really been decided on Romero's play, and the rest was somewhat anticlimatic. The Diamondbacks loaded the bases in the top of the ninth with one out, but couldn't add any insurance runs, as Drew was out by a perfect throw at home trying to score on a wild pitch, and Tony Clark flailed wildly at the other three pitches to end the inning. Lyon came in and quietly (and blessedly for many people's heart rates) retired the side in the ninth with two strikeouts, and the series was leveled at one game apiece.

 
Master of his Domain: Doug Davis, +35.3%
God-Emperor of Suck: Chris Young, -4.6%

All starts sans Chris Young had a base hit -- Hudson had a trifecta of his own -- which explains why Good CY happened to get tagged with the dreaded GES. Not surprisingly, it was Davis' effort that predominately affected the win. None of the hitters were more than 10 percent.

Another solid GDT, with more than 500 comments, about 15 or so of which were on the level of "OHHHHHHH" after the play to end the bases-loaded jam in the eighth. Present were: Muu, Azreous, Jim McLennan, mrssoco, TwinnerA, AZWILDCATS, soco, kishi, foulpole, unnamedDBacksfan, AF DBacks Fanatic, snakecharmer, luckycc, AJforAZ, Scrbl, Frank Squishy, wrigleyrocker12, LucaMaz3, emilylovesthedbacks, peeklay and dahlian. As kishi pointed out, Romero's catch was No. 1 on SportsCenter's top plays. Unfortunately, Doug Davis still ends up taking second billing to John Lackey, who took a no-hitter into the ninth against the Red Sox, only to lose it with one out on a base hit by Dustin Pedroia. Still, despite the theatrics at the end, it was a win, the fourth in five games. We'll take 'em how we can get 'em.

Record: 1-2. Pace: 54-108. Change on last season: 0

This game was, frankly, an embarrassment. I know we may not have been able to get much in the way of advance scouting information on a guy making his major-league debut. But, even so: getting one hit off the debutant Johnny Cueto in seven innings, taking no walks and striking out ten times - the most by a Reds pitcher in his big league debut since 1900? He was perfect up until Upton got our only hit, homering to lead off the sixth, making him the first pitcher for any team to start his career with five perfect innings for over a decade [since Seattle’s Ken Cloude, on Aug. 9, 1997]. I suppose you could say he was "Cueto" good.

While his minor-league pedigree is impeccable, and the quality of his stuff obvious, from the five pitches which struck out Young, the first hitter he faced - the slowest of which was 94 mph! - it was still a pathetic exhibition by our hitters. There's no other word for it. Chris Young: 0-for-4 with four K's. Eric Byrnes: 0-for-4 with three K's. There are a number of hitters who will be very happy to get out of Cincinnati, probably led by Mark Reynolds, who was 1-for-10 with five K's, and Byrnes, who went 1-for-12 in the opening series. Maybe Eric should spend less time on his LiveVideo channel? ;-)

Doug Davis took the start and, to be honest, probably shouldn't have - much as I admire his guts, I can't say this comes as any surprise. His control was way off, throwing more balls than strikes in the 87 pitches it took him to get through 3.2 innings. He walked six and allowed four hits - but continued his Houdini-like trickery, by escaping with only two earned runs allowed [another scored as the result of an error by Hudson who, as noted by Azreous in the comments, seems almost to be more adept at making the hard plays than the easy ones].

Still, Davis had to be bailed out in the fourth inning by the Petit Unit, who retired all four batters he faced. I would not be surprised to see Yusmeiro Petit replace Davis from the get-go, for his next scheduled start, on April 8th. The B-bullpen - after Petit, we got Slaten,, then Medders - and Juan Cruz were solid, restricting the Reds to just one hit in 4.1 innings of work. Brandon Medders was a bit wobbly, loading the bases on that hit and two walks, before escaping the sixth. Cruz was good, striking out the first two batters he'd faced this year, and ending with a 1-2-3 eighth.

The only time we remotely threatened was in the eight, and that was courtesy of David Weathers who walked the bases loaded for us with one out. However, we couldn't get the big hit which would allow us to cash in on the best - indeed, only - opportunities of the day with runners in scoring positions. Alex Romero drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, but Chris Young struck out for the fourth time in a row. Francisco Cordero got his first save for the Reds, slamming the door with a perfect ninth.

soco's Gameday Thread comment sums it up well. "The reality is that we would have been lucky to escape with a win today. Sure the score was 3-2 but all of the peripheral numbers suggest a blowout. The pitching cannot allow walks all game long and expect to come away without a scratch, and the offense needs to figure out how to put the ball into play. No more wasted ABs by striking out anymore." The net result is, Arizona are left to wonder how they'd managed to lose a series, which seemed to be ours for the taking in the ninth inning last night.

Master of his domain: Justin Upton, +13.0%
God-emperor of suck: Chris Young, -16.5%
Dishonorable mention: Doug Davis, -16.2%

If there is comfort to be gained from this, it's that we still won one more game than we did last year in Cincinnati, when Arizona finished the first half of the season there. Then, as now we lost the second and third by a single run, with our closer getting tagged with the loss in one of them. However, in 2007, we also got crushed in the opener, 8-1, and only scored eight runs in 29 innings of play. The D-backs tend not to be quick starters either, but have been consistent; six of the past seven years, we've been 2-2 after four games. Guess that bodes well for tomorrow in Colorado.

Respectable attendance in the Gameday Thread: a little down on the first two games, but that's entirely expected. Think we almost had as many people with us as were at the park, where less than twelve thousand showed up. Ouch. Joining my doppelganger in the thread [I was at work, so of course was not able to take part...] were oklahomasooners, Wimb, dstorm, Craig from Az, Azreous, Muu, singaporedbacksfan, hotclaws, AZDarkKnight, leemellon, seton hall snake pit, TwinnerA, bcloirao, snakecharmer, Wactivist, kishi, soco, 4 Corners Fan, and a somewhat confusing post from Fat Vegas Alan. Delighted to report that charmer updated her roll-call script for the new platform, which will save me the effort of listing names manually.

Statistical quirk of the day. Alex Romero, with his sacrifice fly today and his sac. bunt yesterday, joins a very elite club - at least for the moment. Only five players in baseball history have two or more plate-appearances, but no official at-bats. The others are: Ernie Rudolph [2 PAs, 2 walks]; Matt Karchner and Kei Igawa [each 2 PAs, walk and sacrifice]; plus the all-time champion, Jose Parra who had four plate-appearances, resulting in two walks and two sacrifices. Romero is the only non-pitcher in the bunch, though one suspects his membership will turn out to be extremely ephemeral.

On to Colorado, and the start of the regular-season series against the Rockies, which is the focus of this year's bet with RoxGirl [winner gets to take over the loser's site for a day]. It'll be nice to get back to seeing  the D-backs play; they're 1-0 when I see a pitch, 0-2 when I don't. I think the lesson of that is obvious. ;-) Now, let's try and get some men on base when we hit the homers. Though we had one streak last year of eight consecutive solo shots, and the franchise record is eleven, from May 25-June 4, 1998. So might be a while yet...

Lolback of the Week

Arizona completed their spring training with a 9-4 victory over the Monterrey Sultanes last night at Chase. The visitors took the lead in the top of the first, but after Arizona scored three times in the second, they largely rolled from there on. These stats don't count overall, but Upton and Young each had two hits, including a homer; Reynolds added a three-run shot, a monster bomb which cannoned off the facade of the second deck in left.; Hudson two hits and a walk; and Chris Snyder two walks. The roof at Chase was closed during the seventh inning, in observance of "Earth Hour, but on a worrying note, Jackson was sent home after batting practice, with the dreaded 'flu-like symptoms'.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing, was Micah Owings pitching five innings without allowing a walk and throwing 52 strikes in 71 pitches. He did allow nine hits and three earned runs, but it still looks like his best performance of the pre-season. "Now the real stuff is about to begin. I'm going to key in on this and take it as a positive going forward," he said afterwards. i certainly hope so: with the anticipated loss of Davis, Owings would be our #4 starter, rather than the #5, while we wait for DD and Johnson to return. His Cactus League outings have not been what we wanted to see.

It has certainly been a better month for our hitters than our pitchers. Obviously, it's hard to compare stats with the Grapefruit League, which is generally less hitter-friendly, but we led all National League franchises with a .297 batting average this spring, and had an overall line of .297/.372/.476. On the other hand, our team ERA ended up at 6.15, ahead of only the Giants and Astros, and allowed more homers than anyone else. One bright point there, however, is that we also struck-out more opposing hitters than anyone, save the Mets.

Think it turned out to be less predictable a month than we expected. Going in to spring training, about the only questions were whether Tracy and Johnson would be ready for Opening Day. But, while the Opening Day lineup looks to be exactly as anticipated, we end up with four men on the Opening Day roster whom I didn't expect to be there: Robby Hammock, Brandon Medders, Yusmeiro Petit and Alex Romero. Let's take a look at each of them, and see how they got there.

Robby Hammock Though it was known that Miguel Montero had broken his right index finger playing winter ball in Venezuela, as late as the end of February, Melvin was saying "I couldn’t say I would rule out ‘Miggy’ right now." However, the healing was much slower than anticipated, and he will now go in to extended spring training before heading to Tucson on rehab. The current estimate is he "might rejoin the D-backs before May 1." As a result, Hammock, who turns 31 six weeks, will start his fifth season in the majors, though he has yet to reach 200 at-bats in any of them - and probably won't get there in 2008. Melvin said Hammock will play once a week, to give Snyder a day off, but having hit .208/.283/.292 in spring, isn't likely to see much more action.

Brandon Medders Out of options and dispatched to Triple-A in the middle of last season, Medders looked likely to be waived or traded before Opening Day. However, the Vegas hotel-like implosion of Dustin Nippert opened the door, and Medders had a quietly effective Cactus campaign, allowing 13 hits in 12 innings, with four walks and nine strikeouts. Here's hoping he returns to the form shown in 2006, when he had a 3.64 ERA in 71.2 innings - he did okay after returning from Tucson late last season, allowing two runs in seven innings, on seven hits. Let's have no more first-pitch grand-slams, please.

Yusmeiro Petit He gets his chance because of the promotion of Edgar Gonzalez to the rotation, as replacement for Johnson and Davis - the Petit Unit will take over EdGon's role as long relief, and may end up with a spot-start or two, it there's a need for any additional arm in the rotation. He had an excellent spring, with a sub-three ERA in 12.1 innings, and an outstanding K:BB ratio of 17:3. Still on 23, he will be continuing to develop, and produced a very credible ERA+ of 103 last season, making ten starts. To quote one scout, "He doesn't have a power arm but has a plan and the ability to execute." He has to be good. We sponsor his Baseball-Reference.com page. :-)

Alex Romero Battling for the left-handed bench spot were Romero and Trot Nixon - the latter an 11-year veteran, the former without a major-league at-bat to his name. But it's the rookie who won out, after hitting .345 in spring, and even the fact he can't play first-base couldn't stop him. Don't expect power from Romero; in 202 career games at Triple-A, he has just five homers, but good contact skills, with a K:BB ratio of 75:52 over that time. He's still only 24, so as a waiver-wire pickup, claimed by us in January 2007, he's proving quite acceptable. Loved his reaction on hearing the news he was on the roster: "I have to go buy a phone card right now."

Time for the final recap of Heroes and Villains from Spring Training. As always, the sample size here makes this almost as meaningless as the games themselves - that said, isn't it better to have a good pre-season than a bad one? Our hitters were generally very productive, with six of our starting eight batting .300 or better [Stephen Drew got there right at the end!]. For some reason, those named "Chris" appeared to do particularly well...

• Chris Snyder: .395/.490/.884, 5 HR
• Chris Burke: .371/.437/.710
• Chris Young: .333/.429/.636
• -------------------------------------
• Eric Byrnes: .246/.306/.404
• Trot Nixon: .214/.297/.411
• Robby Hammock: .208/.283/.292

• Jailen Peguero: 11 IP, 9 H, 3 ER, 13 K
• Yusmeiro Petit: 12.1 IP, 13 H, 4 ER, 17 K
• Chad Qualls: 9 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 5 K
• -----------------------------------
• Micah Owings: 15.2 IP, 22 H, 17 ER, 12 K
• Brandon Lyon: 8.2 IP, 19 H, 13 ER, 3 K
• Dustin Nippert: 10 IP, 24 H, 16 ER, 8 K

With that, we end the dress-rehearsals. There's now less than 24 hours to go before the curtain goes up on our first pitch of the 2008 major-league season. I can almost taste it now, though the weather forecast for Cincinnati is questionable, with a 40% chance of rain tomorrow. I really hope they get the game in, not least because I have taken the day off work for the occasion. [Actually, I'd maxed out the hours in my vacation bank, and if I didn't take time out, would have stopped accruing them. Opening Day seemed like as good a time as any to do it!]

I hope you're all enjoying SnakePit v2.0. I want to thank Trei and his team for making it such a smooth changeover, and for answering all our questions and my bug reports - whether they were for actual bugs or not! There are some really kick-ass features here, such as the new Gameday Threads which automatically refresh and alert you of new posts. I'm in awe of the work that's gone into this. It is still a project in progress, but it promises to be quite phenomenal.

Couple of things to point out; the 'rec' button you see can be used to recommend good posts - if enough people do so for, say, a FanPost, it will eventually be boosted to a special section. If you read something you like, feel free to use it, as a virtual round of applause for the creator. If you find a quick link, video, etc. of interest and want to post that here, without writing up a full story, you can now do that using the FanShots area - Azreous has already done a couple of them.

Today's talking point. Over at Bleed Cubbie Blue, Al has published his 2008 predictions, picking us to finish fourth in the division. Do you think he's still bitter about the whuppin' we inflicted on the Cubs in the playoffs? ;-) But the real question is: what do you think the order of finish will be in the 2008 NL West.

I'll see you all tomorrow morning, for the first game of the year. The winter is over; the spring has gone; it's time for the boys of summer to take over once again. How sweet a thought that is. I think I'll watch The Natural this afternoon.

Play ball!