Diamondback Journal

HOUSTON — Houston we have a problem?  Not in Phoenix.

Manager Kirk Gibson of the Arizona Diamondbacks seems to be pushing all the right buttons lately for his team who now have over taken sole-possession of first in the NL West.  After some struggles in April and one in May the Diamondbacks are surprising me and everyone else following the West right now.  But I do believe I said Arizona could be a sleeper earlier this year.  Anyone smell a Diamondbacks vs. Indians World Series?

After a period of losing seven of nine this month, the Diamondbacks followed that fluster by winning fourteen of their next sixteen, a winning percentage of .875.  Since that span too, Arizona has swept three teams only missing another sweep with a loss at Colorado on May 24.

What were we install for Sunday after Saturday’s blow-out of the Houston Astros that resulted in Zach Duke winning in his first start of the season and adding a three-run homerun to his lead?   How about Xavier Nady being the hero with a double in the eighth that ensured a victory sweep over the awful Astros.

In the early stages of the game it seemed that Arizona would remain behind San Francisco as Houston starter, J.A. Happ, had a no-hitter and two-run lead till Willie Bloomquist’s two-out single in the fifth.  That seemed to end both Happ’s day and be the spark to get the Diamondbacks going on offense.

Houston scored in the fourth when Jeff Keppinger doubled to lead-off the inning and reached third on Hunter Pence’s single.  Josh Collmenter’s balk though gave the Astros their first run with Keppinger allowed home on the play.  In the very next inning, Happ in need of some run support behind his outing sent a solo shot out of the park to increase the Astros lead at 2-0.

However, in the sixth, Arizona’s Justin Upton led-off with a triple and trotted in easily on Chris Young’s sacrifice fly to center to cut Houston’s lead in half.

In the eighth, with Ryan Roberts and Jeff Fulchino on base for the Diamondbacks, Nady proceeded to clear the bases with a double to overtake the lead from Houston.  Juan Miranda then followed with his own RBI, a single, to give Arizona’s bullpen a more comfortable cushion who have been lights out this season so far.

It would hold up as Houston could not touch set-up man, David Hernadndez, nor closer, J. J. Putz.  Putz had a perfect ninth en-route to his sixteenth save, two behind saves leader Leo Nunez (18) of Florida.  But Putz’s ERA (1.57) makes any batter intimidated when steeping into the batter’s box late in the game.

The win not only puts the Diamondbacks a half-game over San Francisco, but marks their sixth straight.  Not bad for a team that lost 97 games in 2010.

PHEONIX — A deranged Minnesota Twins team is just what the doctor ordered for a surging Diamondback team.  After losing five straight games earlier, the Arizona Diamondbacks have followed that by winning eight of their last nine.

Minnesota (15-30) had one poorly pitched inning in their first two games of the series before falling just short in the finale against the now .500 Diamondbacks (23-23) for their first three-game series sweep of the season.

Arizona got off on the right track by opening up the offense with a solo-homerun off Juan Miranda’s bat in the fourth.  The D-backs added a second run in the inning off an RBI-single by pitcher Daniel Hudson scoring Xavier Nady.  Nady had reached base on a walk after the Miranda homerun and advanced to second on Henry Blanco’s single.

Minnesota scored their first run with some help from their starter, Francisco Liriano.  Delmon Young singled to lead-off the fifth and Rene Rivera followed with a double to advance Young to third.  After Alexi Casilla was called out on strikes, it was up to Liriano to execute the damage; batting only because National League park rules say so.  His groundout showed his lack of batting experience, but, it did the job by cutting the Diamondbacks lead in half.

Quickly though, Arizona’s lead disappeared and the Minnesota Twins had now tied the score at 2-all with Young’s solo homerun, his first of the season.

However, when a team is on a winning streak as the one the Diamondbacks are currently on, these teams always seem to find a way to win regardless of the talent level.

After a relief pitcher replaced Liriano, Willie Bloomquist welcomed him with a lead-off double, taking third on outfielder Ben Revere’s throwing error.  Ryan Roberts followed with another fly to center, this time playable for Revere, but deep enough for Bloomquist to score and break the 2-2 tie.

Hudson had one his stronger starts thus far, going a season-high eight innings to give his bullpen the day off.  J.J. Putz is still dominating the closer role for Arizona, earning his twelfth save to remain perfect in as many opportunities.

LOS ANGELES — At the end of the day, all that matters is which team scores more runs than its opponent regardless of the number of hits executed.  Saturday’s game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers proved this truthful as Arizona slithered their way to a one-hit victory over the Dodgers.

Typically, if a major league pitcher one-hits a division foe, the baseball world would expect that pitcher to come out on top with the W.  Too bad for Los Angeles starter, Chad Billingsley, that philosophy did not hold up as he surrendered the one-hit to Arizona in the second inning that led to their victory.

Stephen Drew’s double in the second off Billingsley was all Arizona needed to defeat Los Angeles despite doubles by Billingsley and James Loney and a ninth inning threat.  Drew smacked his 0-1 pitch to right field which gave Drew an easy double.  Why Billingsley or any pitcher for that matter would try to pick-off a base-runner at second will always remain a mystery as pick-off’s at any base other than first are few and far between.

Or, in Billingsley’s case, the pitcher is issued an error on the pick-off attempt allowing the base runner (Drew) to advance to third with nobody out.  This set-up an easy sacrifice-fly for Melvin Mora who brought home the only run of the day for both teams.

The win for Arizona nonetheless came upon Josh Collmenter’s first career major league start who held the high-powered offense of Los Angeles to two-hits through six innings and striking out three.

With Billingsley dealing dueling the Diamondbacks to one-hit, the Dodgers kept him in for eight innings as they hoped his best start of the season would wake up their offense; it apparently did not work.

To ensure Collmenter’s first major league win, the Diamondbacks sent closer J.J. Putz to mound who got his eighth save in a nerve-wrecking inning for Collmenter.  He allowed a single and after a strike-out walked Andre Ethier.  But, a batter later, Putz got Matt Kemp to groundout into a double-play that not only snapped Arizona’s five-game slide, but gave the Diamondbacks franchise their first one-hit victory.

SAN DIEGO– After an 0-4 start to the season, Daniel Hudson of the Arizona Diamondbacks has gone a perfect 3-0.  Arizona’s bats have also been kind to Hudson during that streak, but, he needed very little help as he dominated the San Diego Padres from the start.

Hudson pitched seven shut-out innings in which he got five Padres on strikeouts and only five reached base.  Hudson now seems to have found his stuff, and it is working beautifully for both him as well as the Diamondbacks organization.  The bullpen was also phenomenal as they finished the final two-innings with just one-hit, striking out two and surrendering no free passes.

Dustin Moseley though showed the consistent problem in San Diego even though his outing was just par.  He had no offense to back his five inning, six runs on seven hits performance Saturday.

At the end of the day though, the box score shows that it was all about Arizona in their 6-0 victory over the San Diego Padres.

Arizona scored right away in the first on a throwing error by Eric Patterson which allowed Ryan Roberts to score all the way from second.

In the third, Chris Young led-off with a walk and Ryan Roberts followed with a single.  Soon after Young advanced to third on Justin Upton’s fly-out.  Roberts then stole second with Stephen Drew batting, who singled to drive home Young, and positioned Roberts at third with one-out; Drew reached second on the play by a bad throw from Maybin.

Melvin Mora had an RBI-single to right scoring Roberts and Juan Miranda concluded the innings runs with a run-scoring ground-out.

Roberts also got aboard in the fourth, and scored again on Upton’s seventh homerun.

After the Upton homerun though, San Diego’s pitchers stopped the bleeding and did not allow another base runner for the remainder of the game.

PHOENIX– After blowing out the Chicago Cubs Friday evening 11-2 and dropping the next two games of the series, the Arizona Diamondbacks used a three-run fourth inning to prevent the Cubs from taking a 4-game series victory.  Starter Daniel Hudson was sharp in his outing against the Cubs.

Chicago got first blood with Alfonso Soriano’s lead-off double in the second inning.  Soriano reached third on Marlon Byrd’s ground-out, and another ground-out from Carlos Pena gave the Cubs the short-lived lead.

Ryan Roberts tied the game in the bottom of second for Arizona with his sixth home-run of the season off Chicago’s starter, Casey Coleman.

Arizona pulled away in the fourth by scoring three runs off the struggling Coleman of Chicago.  Coleman walked the lead-off batter, Miguel Montero, and with Roberts single to center Montero reached third-base safely.  Coleman then balked with Juan Miranda batting, allowing Montero to score and position Roberts at second.  After Miranda’s line-out that moved Roberts to third, Hudson’s sacrifice bunt allowed Roberts to score, giving Arizona a 3-1 lead; all other base-runners were safe on the play.  With Gerardo Parra stealing third, a wild pitch by Coleman with Justin Upton at the plate, gave the Diamondbacks a 4-1 lead.

Coleman’s day ended after the fifth inning as he struggled with his command most of the day.  He allowed four earned runs on four hits, striking out only three batters, and dealing five passes to Arizona batters.  It was his second loss of the season.

The Cubs though were not put away just yet as they managed to score two-runs off Hudson in the seventh making it a game.  Geovany Soto doubled home both Marlon Byrd, who reached on a single, and Carlos Pena, reaching on a walk, and the Cubs closed to within a run of Arizona.

After Hudson finished the seventh, it was the end of his day too as his pitch count was already over 100.  He was charged with all three-runs but earned his second win of the season.

Chicago however could not get a rally in the ensuing innings, as they fell to Arizona 4-3 Sunday afternoon to split the series.