Record: 4-5-1. 5-inning record: 5-5
This is not a contest on which I’m going to dwell. Put it this way, it didn’t exactly prove much of a distraction from work. Indeed, I probably ended up getting more work done than on a typical Tuesday afternoon, as a parade of Diamondbacks’ pitchers got more or less blasted by the Rockies’ hitters. Colorado scored in every inning from the second through the seventh, and the majority of their hits were for extra-bases, including four home-runs.
Three of those came off Luke Weaver, who didn’t have as successful an outing as his first time out, when he worked two scoreless. He looked fine in the first, putting up a zero around a one-out walk. However, one out after a lead-off double in the second, a 93 mph fastball arrived in Brendan Rogers’ happy place, and it left rather faster than it arrived. Weaver’s third inning included a pair of further home-runs, as he allowed four runs on five hits and a walk, with four strikeouts. The broadcast crew and pitching coach Matt Herges stressed repeatedly it was all about the process, not the results, and that’s not wrong. But loud, hard contact is never a good thing from any pitcher.
And there seemed to be a lot of it this afternoon. Corbin Martin allowed a run in each of his two frames, getting in on the HR action by allowing one in the fifth. He scattered three hits, walking none with a strikeout. We got out first look at Tyler Clippard in the sixth and it wasn’t impressive, as he allowed a run on two hits and a walk. Stefan Crichton didn’t allow a run! Of course, he only faced one batter… Ryan Buchter may have punched his ticket to minor-league camp, being quickly charged with four runs. He only actually retired one batter, eventually mercy-ruling out, albeit after 32 pitches. But J.B. Bukauskas did finish on a good note, a 1-2-3 eighth with two K’s, as this one got called after 71⁄2 innings.
On offense, the D-backs did manage ten hits, including home-runs by Carson Kelly and Christian Walker. Josh Rojas looked good at the plate, hitting the ball hard, with a double and a single, though he did have a rather embarrassing misplay in the outfield. Let’s blame the sun and move on. Kelly also had a pair of hits, as did Stuart Fairchild, and Daulton Varsho doubled, getting his spring OPS up to .882. But this was very much a game we want to forget.
Tomorrow, it’s off to Camelback Ranch for Arizona’s first encounter of the year with Los Angeles. That is a night game, with no apparent local radio broadcast to be found. Seth Frankoff gets the start for the D-backs. Hopefully, he and the other Arizona pitchers will be able to avoid conceding double-digit runs there.
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