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Bullpen dooms D-Backs in
opener
Halsey's brilliant start undone in late
innings
By
Daniel Blank / MLB.com |
PHOENIX - The bullpen gate in left field
might as well be a revolving door.
The faces keep changing for Arizona's
relief corps, but unfortunately for the
team, the results remain the same.
The most recent addition, Armando
Almanza, served up a game-tying home run
in the eighth, and Lance Cormier -- the
most dependable reliever in the 'pen --
allowed a run in the ninth as Arizona
fell to Cincinnati, 4-3, at Bank One
Ballpark on Friday night.
"Terrible," Diamondbacks manager Bob
Melvin said of his feelings after the
loss. "We had opportunities earlier to
pad our lead, and to give up the
three-run homer right there is
demoralizing."
The combination of a porous bullpen and
a staggering offense wasted yet another
stellar performance from a D-Backs
starting pitcher. Arizona's starters
have given up just five runs in the last
three games, despite facing the two best
offenses in the National League. This
time, it was Brad Halsey whose efforts
went for naught.
"I didn't make every pitch, but I'm not
going to [do that, realistically],"
Halsey said. "I felt like I made a lot
more of the pitches I have to make to be
successful, and it's bittersweet for me.
I've been pitching pretty bad. ... To
lose the game like that, it's pretty
tough."
Halsey threw a career-high 7 2/3 innings
and left with a 3-0 cushion. But he also
left with runners on the corners after
he got Sean Casey to pop out to finish
an 11-pitch battle. Almanza, who was
called up from Triple-A Tucson earlier
in the week to replace Javier Lopez as
the team's left-handed specialist, then
came in to face Ken Griffey Jr.
Griffey worked the count full before
driving a fastball the opposite way for
a three-run home run to tie the score.
"It doesn't work [in retrospect], but I
thought the best move there after
[Casey's] at-bat was to give [Griffey] a
different look and bring in someone with
a little more velocity, too," Melvin
said.
After a double, Cormier struck out Wily
Mo Pena to escape the eighth. But the
Reds got to the righty in the ninth,
when Rich Aurilia poked a looping
opposite-field single to right to score
Adam Dunn with the go-ahead run.
Cormier wasn't so much disappointed that
Aurilia turned a good pitch into a soft
single as he was for allowing Dunn to
reach on a leadoff walk.
"It's ingrained in our head when we
start playing baseball, pitching at 9
years old, to not do that," said
Cormier, whose record dropped to 4-1. "I
just did it, and that's what's more
frustrating. Yeah, it is frustrating
that it's a little bloop hit, but that's
just baseball. That'll happen."
The faltering bullpen might not have
come into play on Friday if Arizona
could have converted on some early
opportunities. After Craig Counsell hit
the Diamondbacks' first leadoff home run
of the season, the next two batters drew
walks against Cincinnati's Ramon Ortiz.
But the threat was erased on a couple of
popouts and a fielder's choice.
"We had him on the ropes a little bit,"
Counsell said. "We were hitting some
balls hard at people, but they shut us
down after [Troy] Glaus' homer."
Glaus roped a 2-2 fastball in the third
for a two-run home run off his former
Angels teammate to stake Arizona to a
3-0 lead, but the D-Backs managed just
three hits thereafter.
"We needed more," Melvin said. "That's a
team that leads the league in home runs,
[is] second in the league in runs [and]
second in the league in RBIs. We're
trying to get more runs right there, and
that was one of the contributing factors
-- we had an opportunity to score more
runs, too, and we didn't."
Although Arizona's offense stalled, it
appeared that Halsey would make the lead
hold up. The rookie gave up eight hits,
but never two in the same inning until
the eighth, when Aurilia dropped a
single over the head of shortstop Alex
Cintron after a pinch-hit single by
Jason Romano.
But Griffey delivered the two-out homer
to tie the score, and after pinch-hitter
Tony Clark struck out with two on and
two out in the bottom of the eighth,
Aurilia delivered his two-out single.
"It's a game we should've won," Counsell
said. "They got big hits in the eighth
and ninth, and we let it slip away." |
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