The Diamondbacks were on the wrong end of a rules interpretation on Thursday night, a mistake by the umpiring crew that might have helped turn an already bad inning into a particularly ugly one. Or maybe it didn’t. It’s hard to say.
But what seems crystal clear about their 8-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants was that the game was lost long before manager Torey Lovullo was fed “misinformation” – in the parlance of crew chief Bill Welke – in the seventh inning. It was lost in the first. Or maybe the second. Or the third. Take your pick, really.