Sunday, April 13, 2008

so it goes

Well, if you're going to lose, lose spectacularly. That seemed to be the attitude in the Diamondbacks' dugout as they were demolished by the Rockies today, 13-5. The mascot for today's crapshoot was pitcher Edgar Gonzalez. In three innings on the mound, Gonzalez allowed three runs, walked two and hit two, including hitting one guy in the head.

The Dbacks followed Gonzalez's example. Though they did score five runs, offense was not there today (notable exceptions: Salazar and Snyder, who finally remembered that he's expected to bat, too). Eric Byrnes took it upon himself to ground out to short at every opportunity. The normally superb Orlando Hudson had trouble baserunning after a hit was ruled an infield fly. Now, I am a bit new at this baseball thing and I did have to look up the infield fly rule. In order to prevent infielders from allowing balls to hit the ground or dropping balls to try and turn double plays, an umpire can declare any infield ball that is catchable through ordinary effort an "infield fly." The batter is automatically out and any baserunners can advance but at their own risk. Now, I don't see why they don't just let them turn the double play, because the batter shouldn't hit that way and I don't think it's fair to punish the batter, especially if the infield fails to make the catch, but that's the rule. But Hudson decided to try and advance, not realizing the batter was out, and caused him to get tagged out.

The bullpen, including previously reliable Pena also suffered a complete meltdown. It was not pretty. And yeah, we were due for a loss. I just don't like to see everything come completely apart. Now, the Dbacks need to put the loss behind them as tomorrow the Big Unit takes the mound in his first start this year against the Giants. And hey, it's the Giants. Your local baseball rec team could beat the Giants right now.

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