Record: 62-59. Pace: 83-79. Change on last season: -7

How long ago it all seems now. Six months ago, to the very day, Rox Girl paid us a visit and said, "I propose a straight up season series challenge. Win more games against us - including any potential playoff games - and Snakepit Day will return to the Row next year." Technically, I suppose, the playoff games clause means this bet is still on: but with Arizona now 10-2 up, with six to play, and Colorado now nine games back in the standings, it seems all over bar the shouting. On the same date last year, they were only five back, - and still had to win fourteen of the last fifteen regular season games to squeak in to the post-season.

It's kinda interesting to look back on that piece and see the comments from both sidea, such as, "Runs such as the Rockies'... almost always happen when a team is in a multiple season success cycle. It's incredibly rare for mediocre teams to put together such streaks." But I'll save the "O RLYs?" and "Told you sos" for another time. What matters right here, right now, is that this victory means the pressure shifts on to the Dodgers as they try to beat the Phlailing Phillies once again - no doubt, after falling behind early. And I also get to spend the rest of the night relaxing, rather than clicking frantically on the 'Refresh' button every couple of minutes. Works for me, even if I feel bad for Mrs. SnakePit, who set up our dinner in the living-room, in front of the game. I hadn't the heart to tell her it was a replay - she finally worked it out when she realized it was still daylight at Coors!

The early innings of today's game were not exactly plain sailing. The Rockies scored first, a one-out single in the second being misplayed by Dunn into a double, for his first error in an Arizona uniform, and another two-bagger gave Colorado the lead. While that was the only damage Haren suffered, our offense was still apparently enjoying a nice continental breakfast, back at the hotel. Glendon Rusch was throwing the ball very effectively; after four innings, he'd retired 12 of 13 batters face, allowing only a single to Chris Young. There were stirrings of discontent clearly visible in the Gameday Thread.

Fortunately, the five-run fifth inning took care of that. Reynolds doubled to lead things off, and advanced to third on a groundout from Tracy. All we were hoping for was to get the game back to being level, having failed miserably in the ninth last night in the same situation: tying run on third, one out. Chris Snyder, however, wasn't going to settle for a measly sacrifice fly, instead hammering his eleventh homer of the season out of Coors, to give Arizona a 2-1 lead, his 49th and 50th RBI. Weirder was to follow, as Chris Burke went back-to-back after Snyder, with his first homer in 166 at-bats, and almost eleven months. That also got his average up to .200, tying the season high, though - no doubt scared by the altitude - he ended the day at .197.

After Haren struck out, Stephen Drew then extended his hitting streak to sixteen games with a single. That's tied for seventh in franchise history, and is the best by a Diamondback since Danny Bautista had a 21-game run, back in April 2004. Walks to Young and Jackson loaded the bases for Dunn, who somewhat redeemed himself for not coming through last night with the bags juiced, by delivering a two-run single to right, his first runs driven in for Arizona. An RBI double by Young in the seventh scored Haren - who had two hits, as did Young and Drew, and that completed the scoring for the Diamondbacks.

Dan Haren went eight innings, and threw 118 pitches, tying a season high. He allowed seven hits and two walks, striking out nine - also matching his top figure of the season. I was really surprised to see him go out there for the eighth, given he'd already thrown 103 pitches to get to that point, and the Diamondbacks were sitting on a five-run lead. The bullpen had hardly been taxed, with three innings in the previous two games, and we had both Rosales, unused since the 8th, and Cruz [since the 9th], fully available. Haren allowed a lead-off homer but got through - and Melvin instead turned to Rauch, for the third consecutive day. While I guess this was a 'confidence-building exercise', he took 18 pitches to retire his first batter, and almost turned the lead into a save situation for Lyon, with a double-play proved very, very convenient in closing out the win.

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Master of his domain: Dan Haren, +19.7%
Honorable mention: Chris Snyder, +15.0%
God-emperor of suck: Chad Tracy, -3.9%

The thread cruised past 500 comments, basically before we noticed - I think day games are probably less taxing on the SB Nation servers, which likely helped. Present were GaryTheGaucho [welcome!], kishi, Wimb, Azreous, DbacksSkins, utahdbacksfan, Muu, bcloirao, unnamedDBacksfan, emilylovesthedbacks, srdmad, ZonaBacks10, Scrbl, J Up, AJforAZ, TwinnerA, snakecharmer, 4 Corners Fan, TuLoRocks2008, pepperdinedevil and soco. No problems or real unpleasantness today, I'm pleased to report, so credit to everyone for keeping it civil.

Dodgers are three outs from completing a four-game sweep of the reeling Phillies, so looks likely that they will tie us up again. They will be facing Milwaukee this weekend, while we're in Houston - don't look now, but the Astros have just put together an eight-game winning streak, in time for our arrival. Still, with our Cy Young front-runner on the mound tomorrow, we have to feel optimistic. It looks like the rotation is being aligned so we can throw both Webb and Haren at the Dodgers towards the end of the month, which makes sense.

Oh, and if anyone has a late interest in going to SnakePitFest on August 23rd, we have three spare tickets since shoe will not be able to make it [albeit for reasons that are actually pretty damn cool]. Email me - address in the sidebar - if you, or anyone you know is interested. First-come, first-served, obviously.

Record: 34-29. Pace: 87-75. Change on last season: -2

Double-D has made 39 starts since coming to Arizona. In the 16 where has allowed less than three walks, his record is 9-2. In the now eleven starts where he has handed out more than three free passes, it's 2-8. So, from the moment Doug Davis walked two Pittburgh batters in the first inning - even though one of them looked like a pretty good strike three - it was clear this was going to be a struggle for the Diamondbacks. When Davis walks people, whether the result of a miserly umpire, a lack of control or, as today, a bit of both, trouble tends to result, sooner or later.

In this case, it took a bit of time. The Pirates stranded five men on base in the first three innings, without scoring. But Pittsburgh made no such mistake in the fourth, getting five hits, a walk and a sacrifice fly to plate five runs. The game was blown open, and Davis yanked after just 3.2 innings in which he allowed seven hits and four walks - simply too many base-runners to be effective. It's not necessarily the walks themselves; today, only one of the four came round to score. However, it does drive up his pitch-count - he'd passed fifty before getting out of the second today - and means the hits which Davis will give up are more likely to score runs.

Arizona took the lead on a passed ball in the second, allowing Jackson to trot home from third. However, the next time we got a runner past first-base, we were four runs behind: Mark Reynolds homered to lead off the fifth, but Max Scherzer struggled with his own control in the bottom half. He walked one batter, hit two more and then allowed an RBI single to push the Pirates lead back to four. Even so, we had our chances thereafter: we loaded the bases up and brought the tying run to the plate in the sixth, but Reynolds grounded out. We got two men on in the seventh...and Hudson flew out. Reynolds cut the Pirates' lead in half with his second homer of the day in the eighth, and when Ojeda singled with two outs in the ninth, we had the tying run at the plate once again. However, O-Dawg grounded out to complete an 0-for-5 day, and the winning streak was over.

Pretty much a standard day for Arizona at the plate over the past month: 6-8 hits once more - twelve games in a row for that little streak now - five runs or less [13 straight] and a defeaeach had a pair of hits and a walk, while Reynolds had his two homers, giving him thirteen on the year and 39 RBI, both leading the team. Special K is one of the few Diamondbacks to have been hitting of late; since May 18, he is batting .323 [20-for-62], with six homers and 11 RBI in 18 games. [Despite the ohfer today, O-Dawg is still hot, batting .321 post his return]

The B-squad was out today, with Ojeda, Burke and Romero all starting. I am still not quite sure what Melvin is trying to accomplish by putting Burke in a) the starting lineup, and b) the lead-off spot. I've seen very little to convince me that he is a better option than Jeff Salazar, even taking into account the handedness of the opposing starting pitcher. 0-for-3 with a walk for Burke, dropping his season average to .184. Romero started in right, replacing Upton, whose slump showed no signs of abating with a pinch-strikeout in the seventh. At this stage, it's hard to say what we should do with J-Up. Much as I'd like to see him stay here and work his way through it, there has got to be a point where a young hitter may need to take a step backwards, in order to keep going forward. 6-for-62 with thirty K's, would seem precariously close to that point.

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Master of his domain: Conor Jackson, +9.2%
God-Emperor of suck: Doug Davis, -30.9%
Dishonorable mention: Orlando Hudson, -11.8%

Thanks to kishi for starting the overflow thread today. How wise of me to give him the ability to to do so...about two months ago :-) He's now been "properly" promoted to the page footer, alongside the other editors. I like the pyramidal structure, with one manager, two editors and three authors...  Anyway, present for this morning's entertainment were soco, foulpole, DbacksSkins, mrssoco, kishi, Azreous, hotclaws, dahlian, TwinnerA, Wimb, emilylovesthedbacks, CPAYNEonaplane, luckycc, unnamedDBacksfan and Muu.

Have to say, this was the game in the series I was least optimistic about winning: Davis is still not a pitcher I can bank on for a quality start in the same way as Webb, Haren - and, increasingly, Randy Johnson. If we can get a win tomorrow [and that depends upon whether our offense can rub the sleep from their eyes in time for an unholy first pitch - 12:35 in Pittsburgh, which is about 4 am, Arizona time or something], then that'll be fine. Three wins out of four for a road series is pretty good. Meanwhile, we wait to see whether the inevitable Dodger loss after a Diamondbacks loss ensues as expected.