Another loss to the Diamondbacks, and I’d call it another non-competitive one at that. Outside of a couple brief chances with runners on and a Jason Heyward solo shot, the bats didn’t do much of anything tonight, and when the Diamondbacks put up a three spot in the fifth, it turned out that was plenty.
There will be stretches like this, of course, and there have been before. Bats get hot, bats get cold, balls fall in, balls get caught. I’ll need a lot more days and/or injuries (gulp) before I’d say there’s an offensive problem or some reactionary business like that.
Speaking of injuries, here’s hoping Javy Baez is fine. He took a shot to the knee on a tag, and then departed a couple innings later.
I hate when this happens, because I know the angry pushback I’ll get … but I can’t not tell it like it was: Kyle Hendricks looked really good tonight. His command was much better than it has been, and he had especially nasty movement on his pitches, especially the changeup (it looked like KYLE HENDRICKS CHANGEUP). Hence all the strikeouts.
He was certainly not as efficient as he would have wanted, but a lot of that was because he was getting NO borderline calls after an early strikeout on a borderline pitch. At bats just kept getting extended, and he was near 100 pitches by the time the 5th inning got into the danger zone. And about those three runs in the fifth, just one batted ball that inning had an above 50% hit probability. It just wasn’t all that bad, even in the inning he gave up all of his runs.
Still, woulda taken a shutout to win this one …