On paper, we should have won this game. On paper, Eduardo Rodriguez is a vastly superior pitcher to Zack Littell, the well-traveled journeyman who took the mound for Washington this afternoon on Corbin Carroll Mystery Bobblehead Day. Of course, baseball game aren’t played on paper, and before he’d even recorded his first out of the game, everyone’s favorite hologram had already given the Nationals their margin of victory.
Hologram Eddie didn’t look sharp to start off—his pitches weren’t landing where
he wanted them. Either he was missing badly or leaving pitches in bad places, and for the second game in a row the leadoff batter reached, and was driven in by a dinger that went over the fence. Today it was a James Wood glood single to left, followed by a Curtis Mead homer over the wall in left center. He then walked old Diamondbacks farmhand Andres Chaparro on five pitches, before LuJames Groover bailed him out with a nice 3-6 double play off the bat of CJ Abrams, and then catching a Dylan Crews pop up in foul territory. 2-0 Washington
To be fair, ERod settled in after that, pitching around a leadoff single to start the second and recording outs to the next eleven he faced, and fourteen of the next fifteen. Not too shabby after the rocky start to the first inning.
Meanwhile, our offense was unable to so anything against Littell, who was perfect through 3 2/3 innings before plunking Gabriel Moreno with two outs in the bottom of the fourth. His no-hit bid ended when Pavin Smith singled to lead off the fifth, and the shutout bid ended two outs later when LuJames Groover, in his sixth plate appearance in a major league game, hit a blooper to shallow center that rolled past Nationals center fielder Jacob Young and went to the wall. Initially I hoped it would be a triple, but it was scored as a single and a two-base error on Young, but it gave the young man his first big league hit and his first RBI as well, as Pavin Smith came around to score:
Tommy Tory then walked, but Ketel Marte rolled over on a grounder to second on the first pitch he saw, so Groover didn’t get to score his first run in the bigs. 2-1 Washington
And that was it for the offense. Entirely. Well, except for a Corbin Carroll walk to lead off the bottom of the sixth, but that was promptly erased by Moreno rolling over to second for a double play. After that, we didn’t have another baserunner.
Meanwhile, ERod pitched a clean sixth, and with only (?!) 85 pitches thrown, Torey Lovullo sent him out to start the seventh. That was a mistake, as the first pitch he threw went over left field fence, and after recording an out, he gave up a triple to center. Juan Morillo came in from the bullpen, was greeted by a squeeze bunt for which his only play was to first, so two more runs were in. 4-1 Washington
Jonathan Loaisiga pitched a scoreless eighth, and Drey Jameson, just up from Reno, gave up two more in the top of the ninth, to bring us to our final score of 6-1 Washington, because, as noted above, the offense couldn’t produce even another baserunner. Boo. Hiss.
Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
Tiny Little Bright Spot: LuJames Groover (3 AB, 1 H, 1 RBI, +9% WPA)
Holographic Dimness: Eduardo Rodriguez (6 1/3 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, -10% WPA)
Total Eclipse: The Rest of the Offense (25 AB, 0 H, 1 BB, 5 K, -47% WPA)
The Gameday Thread Diamondbacks vs. Nationals Discussion was sparsely attended again today, and again it was probably just as well, given the product the team put on the field, with a less than whopping 146 comments at time of writing. Precious few went what now passes for Sedona Red, and I’m departing from “popular acclaim,” such as it was, to give this one to AZNailgal520 for shouting out one of our number who could not be with us today and also capturing pretty perfectly the vibe of the whole sad undertaking that was this ballgame:
So we will try to avoid the sweep tomorrow, and if you are willing to pay the Peacock streaming service for the privilege, you can watch the festivities starting at 12 noon AZ time, as Michael Soroka takes the ball for us and Curt Cavalli goes for Washington. We don’t have Peacock, so if I “watch” at all it will be with the MLB Gameday open in a browser tab. But I hope some of you can join us, if you dare, because otherwise it will be a sad and lonely Gameday Thread Diamondbacks vs. Nationals Discussion for whoever is doing the guest recap tomorrow.
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!
