Snake Bitten

On August 23rd, the Diamondbacks beat the Marlins to improve their record to 68-61, taking a three game lead over the Dodgers with 33 games to play. They had acquired Adam Dunn a couple of weeks earlier to counteract the Dodgers pickup of Manny Ramirez, and their pitching staff had the look of a potential World Series champ. Things were going well in the dessert.

Since that day, Arizona is 3-13, now trail the Dodgers by 3.5 games in the standings, and have about a one in 10 chance of even making the playoffs. This isn’t some stretch of bad luck, either; Arizona has been getting their tails kicked. The last two and a half weeks have been a total disaster – everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

In those 16 games, the defense has allowed 91 runs, or 5.69 RA/G. Opposing batters are hitting .305/.379/.488 against the Snakes, and it’s not just the supporting cast letting down the rest of the team.

Dan Haren, the big off-season acquisition that gave the D’Backs two all-stars in their rotation, has managed just 21 innings in his four starts during the stretch, putting 39 men on base and allowing 14 of them to score. The D’backs have lost all four games he’s started during this collapse.

He’s been better than Brandon Webb, however. Webb’s made three starts, managed only 13 2/3 innings, put 34 men on base, and allowed 21 of them to score. That’s a 13.82 RA/9, which is just miserable. Webb has gone from a favorite for the Cy Young award to a guy whose health is certainly in question – it’s hard to imagine a guy with his consistent success being this bad without being hurt. Not surprisingly, the D’backs have lost all three games he’s started as well.

We can’t just blame the pitchers, though – they’ve clearly missed Orlando Hudson, both in the field and at the plate. David Eckstein was acquired to help replace him, but he’s 4 for 26 since coming over to the NL, good for a .361 OPS. That’s not helping, and the struggles of guys like Eckstein, Conor Jackson, and Auguie Ojeda are a significant part of the reason that Arizona has only scored 50 runs during this stretch. If you’re giving up 5.69 runs per game, your offense has to do better than 3.1 runs per game, or you’re going to get beat a lot.

It’s going to be tough for Arizona to bounce back from the hole they’ve dug for themselves, and if they can’t figure out how to get Webb and Haren going again, they don’t have a prayer.