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Josh Collmenter will take the hill for the Arizona Diamondbacks on Easter Sunday as the home team looks to start their season with a sweep of the NL West rival San Francisco Giants. The task will be tall thanks to Giants starter, Matt Cain.
Cain was nails last season with a 2.88 ERA over 221 innings with an impressive WHIP of 1.083. The D-backs did well against him last summer though, recording 18 runs and 15 walks and hanging a 3.92 ERA on the Giants starter over six games. Of course, Matt did win four of those.
Josh Collmenter has struggled this spring (9.95 ERA) but he had a good final start and his skipper thinks they figured out the problem.
"His arm was just lower, lower angle. His head was separated from his arm and he wasn't really over the top of his legs and going down towards his target," Kirk Gibson said before the game.
Gibby put together some video clips and worked with Collmenter to correct the problem which came about in part from his throwing more curve balls. Throwing the breaking ball apparently threw off the release point of his fastball which takes away some of his deception.
Starting lineups
Diamondbacks:
- Willie Bloomquist (SS)
- Aaron Hill (2B)
- Justin Upton (RF)
- Miguel Montero (C)
- Chris Young (CF)
- Ryan Roberts (3B)
- Lyle Overbay (1B)
- Gerardo Parra (LF)
- Josh Collmenter (RHP)
Giants:
- Gregor Blanco (CF)
- Melky Cabrera (RF)
- Pablo Sandoval (3B)
- Aubrey Huff (LF)
- Buster Posey (C)
- Brandon Belt (1B)
- Brandon Crawford (SS)
- Emmanuel Burriss (2B)
- Matt Cain (RHP)
Other Notes:
- Gibby is giving starts to Overbay and Parra and said he will look to get his other bench guys starts this week in San Diego. As we learned last year, he likes to use his players and keep them engaged and ready.
- With a day off Monday, the D-backs could skip a start for their fifth pitcher but won't. Gibby wants to give his top of the rotation guys an extra day of rest early in the season when their arms aren't stretched out and in mid-season form. He also does it for team chemistry and because he believes that, "everybody deserves a chance to fail."
- J.J. Putz and David Hernandez both pitched Friday and Saturday. Gibby wouldn't say if they were available today but he would obviously prefer not to have to use them. But with a day off on Monday, my bet is they go if needed.
- Gibby said that they are still learning about new pitcher, Trevor Cahill. He said that Cahill, despite coming across as a laid back guy, gets pretty hyped and has a tendency to overthrow. Gibby related that during Trevor's bullpen session on Saturday he was nails until Gibby stepped in and Cahill started to get a bit over anxious. The team will work on that with him and find ways to get him mentally ready to start games.
The game will be broadcast on Fox Sports Arizona and there will be a bumping live game thread at AZ Snakepit.
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