The Hinch Era

Thanks to Fox Sports Arizona, and some luck, I was able to win tickets to both Friday's and Saturday's Arizona Diamondbacks games against the Washington Nationals this weekend. While the seats were amazing, and I definitely had fun with my friends and those sitting around me, the Diamondbacks played terribly! Friday's game was kind of tough loss. We didn't capitalize when we needed to on a couple of big moments when we had a runner on third, less than 2 outs, but it was Saturday's game which made me want to puke! 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position. FIVE innings with a runner on third, less than 2 outs and we failed to score him. 2 more errors, both by Reynolds on fairly routine grounders to third. Failure to capitalize on 2 Nationals' errors. SIXTEEN (yes, SIXTEEN) runners left on base! Felipe Lopez, our current star player, making two enormous baserunning gaffes (not running hard through the bag at first and failing to read a ball correctly that would have allowed him to score from third). In fact, and I can't believe I'm saying this, the only good thing about yesterday is that the Diamondbacks' bullpen was effective - seriously, that hasn't happened too often this year. Also, despite the Nationals' loading the bases with less than 2 outs twice in the game for us, we still decided not to try such things as the suicide squeeze play. We didn't steal bases, though Nats starter Lannan wasn't holding anyone on. This is seriously unacceptable from a team with this much young talent. Sure, they're young, but they are still major leaguers. To be like Chris Young or Eric Byrnes making $30 million, and to be 1-for-30 on the season is bogus. The Diamondbacks need to seriously evaluate trading Byrnes along with possibly Montero (the only reason being that I can't see anyone taking Byrnes without some kind of incentive too) to get a new fifth starter or a veteran third baseman and sending Reynolds down to triple-A Reno for some additional batting practice. Then, they need to work day in and day out on pitch recognition at the plate, not swinging at balls in the dirt or at their chins, and on not striking out 200 times a season. The biggest bright spot of the games? Doug Davis and.... no, just Doug Davis. Saturday first inning he had a pickoff at first, then gave up only one run on 4 hits over 6 innings (the run being to Adam Dunn on a home run.... understandable). He absolutely should have had a win with a score of something like D-Backs 4 or more, Nationals 1. It's a cryin' shame they couldn't produce to pick Double-D up! Hopefully, we'll see something good come from the ashes of this carcass of a Phoenix baseball team today, and they'll pull together to avoid the series sweep to the worst team in all of the MLB.