The Diamondbacks entered this 3 game weekend series against the AL West leading Houston Astros on somewhat of a cold streak compared to their scorching June/July/August that saw their chances at making the playoffs (according to Fangraphs) go from 90.5% on 9/1, down to 83.8% as of 9/10. While it’s not the biggest drop off we have seen (55.2% on Opening Day to 20.8% back on June 1st) it’s still the most inopportune time for their bats to get cold and for their pitching to go off the rails.
Some unfortunate trends for the Diamondbacks starting pitchers failing to get the job done as of late stayed true once again in Game 1, as Brandon Pfaadt learned what many, many pitchers in baseball learn and that is that Yordan Alvarez can hit a baseball really hard and really far.