Over 34,000 fans showed up to Chase Field and saw the Arizona Diamondbacks take advantage of the three errors by the San Diego Padres and steal four bases en route to a 5-0 shutout of the San Diego Padres. Josh Collmenter picked up his eighth victory and lowered his ERA to 3.19 on the season. All of this he did without his best stuff.
Some observations and game notes from the Friday night game:
- The Diamondbacks got in to Phoenix their flight about 2:30 AM and had batting practice for the first time in a few days. Even still, they got out to the early lead, which allowed them to (at least in appearance) coast a bit to the victory.
- Kirk Gibson took Collmenter out with one out in the sixth inning, despite not having given up a run and only allowing six hits. "He went as far as we needed him to go and didn't want to get his pitch count up any higher," he explained.
- Gibby on Brad Zeigler, who retired the last two outs of the sixth: "He's kind of settling into his role. He's throwing the ball real good and getting out lefties better."
- Gibby on Joe Paterson, who closed out the game: "(He) threw a real sharp inning. We've been trying to bring him along all year about getting righties out. He studies a lot of lefties. I know he studies Lopez and Randy Choate. He watches film on those guys all the time. He's starting to be much more effective out there."
- Ryan Roberts on whether Nick Hundley's throw in the first inning hit his bat after he struck out, leading to Willie Bloomquist scoring the first run of the ballgame: "If it did, it might have hit it on my backswing, but I was more or less concerned about swinging and missing and then seeing where he (Bloomquist) was, rather than where the ball was. It didn't square it up by any means."
- The explanation I heard about that play was that it was not interference because he was still in the batters box.