After a day off on Thursday and being swept in three games by the St. Louis Cardinals, the Arizona Diamondbacks try to regroup and start a three-game weekend series against the San Francisco Giants. In Kirk Gibson's pregame press conference, he talked about the progress of starter Daniel Hudson and the recent struggles of closer J.J. Putz.
Hudson threw to live hitters -- about 30 pitches -- on Friday. He felt good, but his command was not what he wished it had been. That, though, is understandable when you go on the shelf as he did.
The subject of closer J.J. Putz and his recent struggles were brought up. One reporter asked if Gibby had considered removing him from the closer's role temporarily to get things ironed out. His answer? "No, I have not."
He is going to continue to close games for the foreseeable future.
As for the problem, it isn't his velocity and by all indications there is no injury. "Pretty much he's missing his location," explained Gibson. If you have to read anything into what he said and what he might think is the problem, it might be this. Gibson pointed out that Putz started off the spring working on a cutter. "He's not throwing that much anymore," he told the media. based on the fact that he offered up that information on his own, it would seem that he thinks that could be the culprit.
Here Friday's starting lineups:
San Francisco:
- Angel Pagan, CF
- Joaquin Arias, 3B
- Melky Cabrera, RF
- Buster Posey, 1B
- Brett Pill, LF
- Hector Sanchez, C
- Emmanuel Burriss, 2B
- Brandon Crawford, SS
- Madison Bumgarner, P
Arizona:
- Willie Bloomquist, SS
- Aaron Hill, 2B
- Justin Upton, RF
- Miguel Montero, C
- Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
- Ryan Roberts, 3B
- Gerardo Parra, CF
- A.J. Pollock, LF
- Patrick Corbin, P
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