Last night’s debut hero, Jose Fernandez, remains in the line-up for this afternoon’s game. However, in an interesting move, he goes across the diamond, taking the place of Carlos Santana at first-base. Fernandez has only 139.1 innings of experience at the position – just sixteen starts. Eight of those were in 2024 with High-A Hillsboro, and the other eight last year at Double-A Amarillo. After last night’s remarkable performance, it feels like Torey Lovullo simply was unable to leave him out of the line-up.
Certainly, he did better than Nolan Arenado had done at third; with Santana’s OPS+ being negative 14, the bar is similarly low at first!
Of course, this afternoon, he’s only having to face the back-to-back Cy Young winner, in Tariq Skubal. Now, being the reigning champion there doesn’t preclude you getting knocked around. Just ask Paul Skenes, who didn’t even make it out of the first inning on Opening Day. But that fate certainly did not befall Skubal in his inaugural appearance, who tossed six innings on three hits, allowing only an unearned run, with no walks and six strikeouts. It’s definitely nice for the D-backs to have secured the series win already: a victory here would therefore fall into the “house money” category.
We will certainly need Zac Gallen to pitch a damn sight better than he did. After more or less cruising through four innings, the wheels came off in the fifth, where Gallen was charged with four runs, without recording an out. I also note Alek Thomas getting a day off, with Jordan Lawlar moving over to centre, and Tim Tawa getting the start in left. Ketel Marte moves to DH, with Ildemaro Vargas playing second in his utility role. I’m under no illusions that this is going to be other than a tough game for Arizona, going up against one of the best pitches in baseball. They’ll need to play clean, and take advantage of whatever opportunities they can find, if they are to complete the sweep and get back to .500.
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