Diamondbacks 3, Washington 5: Not Ready for Prime Time

I figure our chances are good to take two out of three from the Washington Nationals in the nation's capital this weekend, but as I thought when I read over the series preview for this one, I figured this was the one we were most likely to drop. It was a matchup of soft-tossing lefties, with Mitch Bratt going for us in only his fourth Major League start, while Foster Griffin, who has clearly emerged as the ace of the Nationals' staff this season and who pitched a scoreless inning for the National League in the All-Star Game the other week, was going for them. Sad to say, it went pretty much as I expected.

Bratt, who hadn't gotten through five innings in his first three starts, was looking good early for us, even as the team around him wasn't helping him out so much. He pitched around a one-out walk in the first to put up a zero in a 13 pitch inning, and then he put up another zero in the second despite having two strikes called as balls (and not challenged by James McCann, who was behind the dish for us this afternoon) to put the leadoff man on base with a "walk", followed by Ketel Marte botching an easy double-play grounder with one out that would have ended the inning but instead went for an error. At that point, Bratt should have been out of the inning, but instead, he had runners on first and second with only one out. Much to the young man's credit, he didn't get visibly upset or rattled, but instead got back to work and recorded the last two outs efficiently enough that, despite the mishaps around him, he only needed 17 pitches total to close out the inning. This put him at 30 pitches through two, with no runs allowed, which was a very good sign.