Record: 14-15. Pace: 78-84. Change on last season: +1

Consider it lucky if you happened to not watch/listen to this one. It started ugly and only got better for about 10 minutes at the end. R.A Dickey decided to channel the souls of every knuckleballer to ever pitch in the MLB and it paid off amazingly as he pitched shutout baseball into the 9th. The Diamondbacks meanwhile decided that getting hits were SO last year and swung at just about everything Dickey threw with no success. Hit the Jump. Now.

Continue reading this post »

Hello everyone. Welcome to This Week in Baseball! Wait... That's not right. Sorry about the delay in this next series but studying for Finals will do that to you. Without further ado, here is the next series for your viewing pleasure!

So I had to make some edits to some players i.e. Joe Paterson was throwing 95, ya we can't have now can we? He was also throwing overhand which looked way funky so I found a comparable pitching form for him. I forgot to include Miley in the bullpen for Game 1, but no worries, he was in there for Game 2 of this series. Hmm... I think that's all I did. If you have anything please let me know like always.

Continue reading this post »

With Spring Training over, the Arizona Diamondbacks head off into the regular season with high hopes and those will be put to the test early against the San Francisco Giants. The Opening Day Roster and Pitching Rotation are what we expect to see in real-life with Stephen Drew on the DL (in my case at AAA since he's still healthy), Willie Bloomquist as the starter and John McDonald as his back-up. The first game we will see Ian Kennedy face off against Tim Lincecum.

If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see, please let me know. I can write out the Box Score or Game Log if you are interested in what happened during the game. Otherwise, I will just continue writing very basic hitting and pitching recaps.

Game 1 Recap

Diamondbacks 3, Giants 1

Notables
Aubrey Huff: 1-4, HR, RBI, R
Aaron Hill: 2-4, 2 2B, R

Dbacks Pitching

Ian Kennedy was amazing to say the least. He was perfect through 4 1/3 innings until Aubrey Huff took a 3-2 pitch and deposited it into right field for the first hit and run of the day for the Giants. He settled down after that little bump and pitched an amazing 6 2/3 innings while giving up the 1 run on 4 hits and 2 walks while striking out 7. He was pulled for Takashi Saito and he got the Hold with a perfect inning while David Hernandez threw 1/3 of an inning for another Hold. J.J. Putz then came on to pitch an easy 9th for his 1st Save of the young season.

Dbacks Hitting

The offense did all their damage against Tim Lincecum in the bottom of the 3rd. The game log sums it up very nicely.

Bloomquist popped out to Belt (P3). Hill doubled to center. Upton lined to left for a single. Young doubled to left, Hill scores, Upton advances to 3rd. Kubel hit a sacrifice fly to Pagan (SF8). Upton scores. Young advances to 3rd. Montero grounded to right for a single. Young scores. Goldschmidt grounded out to Sandoval (5-3), ending the inning.

The Dbacks had 7 hits with 4 of those doubles, with 1 walk and 8 strikeouts. They saw a total of 131 pitches and worked counts all game long. They knocked Lincecum out after 5 innings and him throwing 97 pitches. After Timmeh left, the offense disappeared. Their bullpen pitched a perfect 3 innings of relief.

Game 2 Recap

Diamondbacks 3, Giants 4

Notables
Angel Pagan: 3-4, 2B, BB, R
Justin Upton: 1-2, HR, RBI, 3 BB, R

Dbacks Pitching

After an amazing performance the game before by Kennedy, today was the complete opposite for Daniel Hudson as he picked up the loss. Dan just didn't have his best stuff on the mound today. He was charged with 2 earned runs and allowed 4 runs to score. The error should not have been an error as Aaron Hill ranged deep in the hole at 2nd and made an amazing play but the throw was in the dirt. Hudson allowed 6 hits, 3 walks and had 2 K's before Gibby pulled him for Ziegler who allowed 2 hits and an inherited runner to score in his inning of work. Bryan Shaw and Joe Paterson pitched the rest and were perfect.

Dbacks Hitting

The Dbacks brought the bats today but couldn't string together any hits beside back to back doubles in the 3rd. Justin Upton led the way with 3 walks to go with his 1st homerun of the season. 10 hits, 3 walks, 2 stolen bases were the good but 9 K's doomed them. The Dbacks had a shot in the 9th but CY lined out to left and Kubel grounded to 3rd to leave the tying run at 2nd.

Game 3 Recap

Diamondbacks 2, Giants 1

Notables
Freddy Sanchez: 2-4, RBI, R
Justin Upton: 3-5, RBI, 2B, R

Dbacks Pitching

You gotta hand it to Josh Collmenter and the bullpen today. He went 7 innings and gave up 4 hits, 1 run and had 1 K in route to getting the hard luck no decision. Takashi Saito went and blew it in his 2/3 of an inning by giving up 2 singles back to back and then the sac fly to Theriot. But have no fear, David Hernandez came up big again and closed the rally with a huge strikeout of Buster Posey. Breslow got his first appearance of the season and worked around a leadoff single to keep his appearance to only 1 hit. Ziegler then came in in the 10th and held the fort with his own scoreless inning.

Dbacks Hitting

Another game, another low scoring affair. The hits are coming, but usually with 1 or 2 outs in the inning and that shuts all opportunities of scoring. Willie B led the Dbacks with 4 singles and surprisingly good range out there at short. But it was Justin Upton again showing why he is the core of the Dbacks. 3 hits, including the winning run as seen below.

Diamondbacks batting. Hill grounded out to Belt (3U). Upton doubled to center. Lopez pitching. Young walked on a 3-2 pitch. Kubel grounded to right for a single. Upton scores. Young advances to 3rd.

After Gerardo Parra homered in the 7th, the pressure was on Kubel to produce. He had gone 2-11 before his single to right clinched the game for the Dbacks in the bottom of the 10th.

The Dbacks next series will be a 3-game set against the San Diego Padres at PETCO Park.

Top 3 Batters

Justin Upton: .500/.643/1.543, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 3 R

Willie Bloomquist: .429/.429/.929 1 SB

Jason Kubel: .250/.286/.702 2 2B, 3 RBI

Bottom 3 Batters

Chris Young: .154/.214/.522 2 K, 2 2B

Miguel Montero: .200/.273/473 4 K

Aaron Hill: .214/.214/.571 3 K, 2 2B,

Top 3 Pitchers

Ian Kennedy: 1.35 ERA, .90 WHIP, 7:2 K/BB

Josh Collmenter: 1.29 ERA, .57 WHIP, 1:0 K/BB

Bryan Shaw: 0.00 ERA, .50 WHIP, 1:1 K/BB

Bottom 2 Pitchers

Daniel Hudson: 3.60 ERA, 1.80 WHIP

Takashi Saito: 5.40 ERA, 1 BS

I recently had the opportunity to win a brand new PS3 and with that, I had the chance to get my first real baseball game in a long while, The Show. I have always loved playing baseball video games. I started out playing Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest on my N64 and have played various titles ever since. The big thing for me about these games was not actually playing the games, but controlling the franchise and simming the season to see how my players did and how well the team as a whole had done.

I've been playing MLB 12: The Show for about 3 weeks now and am very impressed with the game as a whole. The graphics are stunning and it feels like I'm watching a Fox Sports broadcast. The announcing is very smooth and does a great job of mixing up the information unlike every other sports game which spews the same boring stats and generic scripts throughout the entire game. The actual gameplay is superb. The opponent thinks and reacts to what you do at the plate and mound which gives you an actual challenge. You can't just swing for the fences every at-bat. You need to think about maybe moving the runners up with a bunt (don't kill me SABR guys) or throwing a pitch or two in the dirt.

So you may be asking, "So what does this have to do with the Diamondbacks?" Well, I'm here to tell you it means everything. Video games have gotten so good at portraying and projecting what actually happens in real life. The NFL game, Madden, has predicted the Super Bowl winner 7 out of the last 9 times (link). In 2010, MLB 2k10 predicted the Giants would win the World Series (link).

Hit the Jump to see what my plan.

Continue reading this post »

According to this (this article sums this article up very well) Insider-only piece from Chris Broussard, the Kings and Blazers have interest in our restricted FA, Aaron Brooks. The Kings have made it known that they will move anyone not named DeMarcus Cousins and Marcus Thornton and at the right price they will trade Evans. So what is the right price for Evans?

Continue reading this post »

The suns filled at least a couple spots with Sebastian Telfair and Shannon Brown signing 1 year deals each. Hit the jump for links and contracts details.

Continue reading this post »

Well I just had a question about my 2 favorite parts of this website, Pick em' Football & Caption This! Last year was AMAZING. I had a blast participating in these and am wondering will we do these again? I just want to send my appreciation to those who run and organize these events. Great job and thanks for this site. I know that everyone who reads here loves what you guys do and wishes they could do the same thing.