The hangover effect
After playing almost 5 hours in last night's 14 inning victory, the Diamondbacks were a bit slow getting rolling today. Gibby's pregame media availability was pushed back 30 minutes and the team skipped formal batting practice.
The Snake's bullpen however, is fully available despite five guys pitching a combined eight innings.
Qualls and Noberto, the only two arms who didn't throw in the extra-innings duel, are likely the first up. Hopefully, Rodrigo Lopez can go long and the bats provide plenty of run support. No one wants to see Qualls come into a close game.
"I think everybody's available. We have to be careful with some of the guys but they've, I believe, had the least amount of inning of any bullpen so they're well-rested," Gibby said.
Montero is back in the line-up after catching all 14 innings last night. He told his manager that he's fine and ready to go.
"It will be interesting to see how he reacts to it. It will give us a better idea of where he's at."
Feeling good...or better anyway
Gibby expressed his pleasure at the way his team won the past two games.
He was even more pleased with their ability to win low-scoring, tight games than getting the sweep itself, "We need to be able to score three runs and win a game, or four runs and win a game, or two runs and win a game and that was the most encouraging thing."
Emergency preparations
When the D-backs used their final bench player, Chris Snyder, as a pinch hitter Gibby had to prepare for the game to go longer and the possibility of losing his catcher to injury. If that happened, Ojeda was the emergency catcher with Upton moving in to third and Mr. Edwin Jackson set to take the outfield.
Edwin was pretty pleased with himself just for being asked to put on his spikes and grab a glove, just in case.
At the end of the 14th, the D-backs still had two arms left in the pen so they could have gone a few more innings but Adam LaRoche was slated to get the ball if the game went that far. He fancies himself a potential pitcher and jokes about going to Winter ball to work on his pitching.
Mark Grace, who famously pitched an inning against the Dodgers in September 2002 in a 19-1 blowout, was sitting in the office and surprisingly didn't chime in about the pitching prowess's of first-basemen.
Gibby said he was involved in a 20 inning game in Houston during his career that ended with Fernando Valenzuela playing first base.
It would have been fun to see Edwin in the outfield and LaRoche on the mound but I am glad the game ended when it did - and how it did.