Another solid win for the D-backs who now have won seven of their last eight. Good pitching, great defense in the outfield and solid work at the plate to do the little things to push runs across.
It's a lot of fun to watch a winning baseball team. We can only hope this is a sign of things to come next season. In the meantime, you can forget about the horrible record and just enjoy a well-played game.
Gibby's post game remarks:
"We're a team and Augie did his part tonight. Ryan Roberts did his part by getting on then Gerardo Parra got him over. We played a tight game tonight with a team that's been red-hot. I don't if we made any mistakes in the field. We kept it tight. Boyer got in a little trouble, had first and third with nobody out and got a double play. That's fine, we'll take that, we're at home, we'll take last at-bats. So we navigated well. We've talked about that a long time. We executed very nicely tonight."
Gibby talked about how much Adam LaRoche means to the team and complimented him on playing through injuries this season.
"We hope he's back next year," Gibby said.
Asked about the status of his knee, LaRoche explained how the injury happened and what's going on with it.
"I hyper-extended it a couple of weeks ago and it kind of died out and I did it again in San Francisco," LaRoche said. "It's sore but luckily I play a position where I can afford to be slow and it doesn't hurt us too bad."
Adam went two-for-four at the plate with a double that drove in the first run of the game to give the D-backs a first inning 1-0 lead. As always, he was solid at first.
Augie Augie Augie
Gibby talked also about how difficult it is for guys like Augie Ojeda to pinch-hit.
"He's been dry-humped so many times. Augie get ready, Augie get ready," Gibby explained about he frequently calls Augie's name only to have the situation change and he ends up not getting into the game. Dry hump.
In this case, Augie was called to the plate in the eighth inning with the game tied at three. One out and a runner on third (thanks to Parra moving Roberts over after the lead-off double). Augie got the sac-fly to push in the go-ahead run.
Ojeda talked about how difficult hitting off the bench is.
"It's very difficult," He said. "It's the hardest thing in baseball when you sit out and you don't know when your name's going to be called upon and in what situation so you have to pinch hit, pinch bunt, defense, whatever. Any time you sit on the bench for two or three hours and go into the game it's really difficult. It looks easy but it's not. Trust me."
Interestingly enough, if the D-backs had gotten two men on Barry Enright would have been called upon to lay down the bunt.
Daniel Hudson
Hudson had another solid outing spreading seven hits over six innings and only giving up two runs and one walk with six strikeouts.
He was working his fastball to both sides of the plate and on a couple of Astro's hits was simply the victim of them fighting off some pitches away that they managed to keep in play. Of course, he also benefited from yet another outstanding defensive effort in the outfield from Chris Young and Gerardo Parra.
"It's a lot of fun right now going out there and playing good baseball. Seven of eight we've won. It's a good feeling in the club house right now," Hudson said.
He credited the Astro's hitters for working the count on him and getting his pitch count up. He left the game with 104 pitches thrown through six innings (78 for strikes).
Daniel insisted he was trying to pitch to contact and not go for strikeouts.
He said his fastball was good as was his change-up but he didn't have good grip on the slider until later in the game. He felt like the learned something about that pitch that he's going to see if he can work on over the next few days before his next start.
Hudson said he's determined to get that slider to be a more consistent pitch for him.
As for working behind Barry Enright in the rotation, Hudson said it helps him especially when they are facing the same team (unlike tonight). Since Enright also attacked the zone with his fastball that has good movement, Hudson likes to watch how the opposing batters react.
Overall, he seems to have a good approach to his pitching. We'll have to wait and see if he can maintain that aggressiveness after he eventually gets hit around a few times.
"I'm just trying to go up there and put the ball over the plate," Hudson said. "That's all I can control, I can't really control if they hit it hard right at somebody. I just have to go out there and throw the ball over the plate."
Ryan Roberts
"Fortunately, I got back into a hitter's count, 2-2, he threw me another fast ball and I didn't miss it," Roberts said of the crucial lead-off double in the eighth inning.
He said he thought initially the ball was going to be caught and that he didn't consider trying for a triple because he knows how good of an arm Hunter Pence has.
On Ojeda's sac-fly (which wasn't all that deep) Roberts said he was going all the way in that point in the game.