Eduardo Rodriguez and Dylan Floro were today’s villains.
I’m back now from dropping off my laundry for the week to come, so now I can get on with writing this game up in earnest. I gotta say, when I came up with my title for last Saturday’s recap, I wasn’t planning on making it the first of an ongoing series. But here we are. Joy and rapture. Hopefully it will just wind up being a two-part thing.
Anyway.
It was a battle of lefties this afternoon at the Orange Juice ballpark, with former Blue Jay Yusei Kikuchi going for Houston and international Man of Mystery (and, more recently, Mediocrity) Eduardo Rodriguez going for us.
Kikuchi, you might recall, was a Toronto Blue Jay up until the trade deadline, and in fact we faced him in the final game going into the All Star Break. We roughed him up pretty good, too….chased him before he could complete five innings by hanging a seven-run inning on him. He’s been a lot better in Houston, but we got to him before, we could get to him again. And so we did.
The top of our lineup couldn’t do much against him, admittedly, in the first, though Randal Grichuk singled up the middle with two outs so at least get our first runner on the basepaths. The second inning was considerably better, thanks to three consecutive singles to right field by Eugenio Suarez, Jake McCarthy, and Kevin Newman, the last of which drove in Suarez for the first run of the ballgame.
Snakes strike first. pic.twitter.com/HfdlAU1S2A
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) September 7, 2024
That brought Perdomo to the plate with runners on first and second with nobody out. Gerry, sadly, grounded out to short on what looked an awful like it was going to be a double-play ball, but Perdomo beat the throw to first, with McCarthy advancing to third and Newman forced at second. Jose Herrera, back at catcher and apparently okay despite getting clunked on the head last night by Kyle Tucker’s bat, launched a sacrifice fly to right that allowed McCarthy to tag and score. This flipped over the lineup as well for Ketel Marte, who was once again DHing for us. Suffice it to say, however, that while Marte is back in the lineup, he’s really not “back” yet in the true Ketel Marte sense, sadly. He struck out to end the inning. 2-0 D-BACKS
Eduardo Rodriguez, meanwhile, walked a bit of a tightrope through his first two innings of work, but only needed 14 pitches in each of those innings and put up zeroes in both of them, despite pitching around traffic in both frames. In the bottom of the first it was a one-out double to Houston DH and last night’s one-man wrecking ball, Yordan Alvarez, but Alvarez was still standing on second when the inning ended. In the second, Eduardo gave up back to back leadoff singled, but bounced back to retire bottom of the Astros’ lineup in order for another zero and another 14 pitch inning.
The Diamondbacks sat down in order in the top of the third—the only time that would happen until the top of the ninth, when the team (and the vast majority of Diamondbacks fans) were already well and truly checked out. It was the only clean inning, in fact, that Kikuchi would record in his six innings of work.
The bottom of the third brought more traffic from the top of the Houston lineup, as Altuve doubled to the wall in left center, and Alvarez singled to left to advance Altuve to third. ERod is a pitch-to-contact guy, which is always going to be kind of dangerous when facing a lineup like Houston’s, which is kinda terrifying at this point in the 2024 season. Thankfully, however, Yandy Diaz hit the first pitch he saw on the ground to Perdomo, and the Diamondbacks gladly let Altuve score as they turned the double play. Another infield grounder by Alex Bregman ended things with our lead diminished but still holding. ERod’s efficiency continued, too, despite the continuing traffic, as he made it through three innings with only 43 pitches thrown. 2-1 D-BACKS
We also didn’t wind up missing that run for long, as Kevin Newman got it back for us with a two-out solo moon shot over the wall in left:
Crushed by Kevin! pic.twitter.com/B9gypwOuP0
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) September 7, 2024
Perdomo, alas, couldn’t keep the party going, fouling out for the final out of the top of the fourth. 3-1 D-BACKS
So, with the lead back at two runs, ERod came out for the bottom of the fourth. It has been noticed since he has come off the IL that he generally pitches pretty well, but then he has one bad inning or one bad sequence of opponents’ ABs. Today, the bottom of the fourth was indeed that inning, as the wheels came entirely off. After recording the first out on an infield grounder, he proceeded to load the bases with two walks and a hit batsman, and then up a single before finally recording the second out of the inning. After that came another single, followed by an uncharacteristic error by Geno Suarez at third, and then another walk before he finally retired the tenth batter of the inning for the final out. The Astros had batted around, and four more Houston runs had crossed the plate, and in a single inning ERod had thrown 44 more pitches. Ugh. 5-3 Houston
The thing is, we were only down two runs, and which Kikuchi was still in the game, his pitch count was rising and he wasn’t particularly sharp. Herrera led off the top of the fifth by swinging and missing at a ball in the dirt for strike three that wound up rolling all the way to the backstop and allowing Jose to take first on what the broadcast called a strikeout-wild pitch. Back when I was playing little league, we called that stealing first base, but either times have changed or that was never actually a thing. Anyway, after Marte struck out again, Corbin Carroll punched a single to right that advanced Herrera to third with only one out. Sadly, however, Grichuk grounded to third, freezing Herrera on the base as the throw to second forced out a sliding Carroll, who upended Altuve and allowed Grichuk to reach first safely at least. Christian Walker, who is also back but not entirely “back” from his stint on the IL, couldn’t get Herrera home, flying out to short for the final out.
Meanwhile, Dylan Floro pitched the bottom of the fifth for us, and in a pleasant surprise, retired the Astros in order for the first clean inning a Diamondback pitcher had thrown in this game. That brought Geno Suarez to the plate, though he increasingly seemed to be running on fumes. He hung a slider to Geno, and Geno, who was likely thinking that Newman’s souvenir ball in the left field seats might be feeling lonely, gave it some company with this bomb on a hanging Kikuchi slider:
GENOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! pic.twitter.com/hHZOmOxQyx
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) September 7, 2024
There was nothing doing after that, but we were back to within a run. 5-4 Houston
Well, until Dylan Floro came out for the bottom of the sixth, and utterly blew up. He gave up back-to-back singles, then recorded his first (and only) out of the inning, before giving up two more singles that drove in two runs, and finally a three-run Jeremy Pena dinger to clear the bases and allowing Houston to double up the five runs they had managed up to that point. Joe Mantiply relieved him after the Pena shot, but the damage was done. 10-4 Houston
We did keep getting more runners on the bases in the seventh and the eighth against the Houston bullpen, but the only joy that came from those baserunners was when Christian Walker hit a two-out RBI single in the top of the seventh to get us to 10-5 Houston.
Slade Cecconi, though, gave that run straight back thanks to a two-out Jose Altuve dinger high over the wall in left center in the bottom of the seventh, and while he pitched a clean bottom of the eighth, we could do nothing further against the Houston bullpen the rest of the way. 11-5 Houston
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
All Hat: Kevin Newman (3 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 HR, +14.9% WPA), Eugenio Suarez (4 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 HR, +12.2% WPA)
No Cattle: Eduardo Rodriguez (4 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 1 K, -41.2% WPA), Dylan Floro (11⁄3 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 HR, -21.0% WPA)
It was another sparsely populated Gameday Thread today, though not as abject as last night’s. We wound up with 148 comments at time of writing, which I imagine is thanks largely to our offense keeping us within striking distance for longer, though that ended and the conversation dried right up after Floro happened. Anyway, Comment of the Game goes to Fearless Leader, for this suggestion that would have been very on point last night, as well as today, and will likely still be very relevant tomorrow:
As it was written, let it be so!
Especially as we may not have a lot of runs to spare tomorrow, as Ryne Nelson, possibly the Arizona starter I feel most comfortable with at this point in time, goes up against Justin Verlander. Verlander will be making only his fourth start after a midseason stint on the IL, but, well, even at age 41 he is still Justin Verlander. Here’s hoping we can get to him and that we can avoid being swept out of the Texas Orange Juice Emporium. For I believe the first time this season, ESPN has decided to flexxxxxx its broadcast rights to have the Diamondbacks featured in the Sunday late game on their channel, so first pitch is scheduled for 4:10pm AZ time, and you will only be able to watch it on ESPN. Hope you can join us, assuming that you’re not utterly beaten down by these first two games, and assuming that you’re not going to be embroiled in watching the first full weekend of the 2024-5 American hand-egg season, which I have been led to understand is going on tomorrow.
If I feel so inclined, I may add a late “Scoreboard Watching” section once the remaining Saturday games have gone final.
As always, thanks for reading. As always, go Diamondbacks!