Grit Index: Greinke’s dominance ends D-backs’ five-game win streak

All quiet between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Nothing happened, as was anticipated by the team’s two managers.

“I know we won’t start anything and I don’t think they’ll start anything,” Don Mattingly said prior to the game alluding to whether any bad blood remained from the brawl on June 11.

Zach Greinke, whose plunking ignited the melee, performed his retaliation with seven shutout innings, limiting the D-backs to a pair of hits in
a series-opening 6-1 victory Monday in front of 22,614 at Chase Field.

Greinke (7-2) retired 10 straight batters at one point on his way to his first career victory against Arizona.
The Dodgers pounded out a season-high tying 17 hits, 11 against starter Randall Delgado, who despite the loss, pitched his third straight quality start.

Delgado (1-3) cruised through the first three innings, but then gave up a run-scoring base hit to Juan Uribe in the fourth and back-to-back RBI singles to Adrian Gonzalez and Hanley Ramirez in the fifth.

The win pulled the Dodgers, 13-3 in their last 16 games, to within 3.5 games of the D-backs in the NL West.

The Good

Martin Prado’s two-out double in the seventh extended the team’s streak of extra-base hits to a Major-League-best 73 straight games, the sixth-longest streak in team history.

Paul Goldschmidt went 2-for-4 and has now hit safely in eight of his last nine games against the Dodgers. He is hitting .355 (11-for-31) in eight games in July.

The Bad

The D-backs season-high tying five-game winning streak came to an end.

Will Harris’ 11-game scoreless streak came to end, as he allowed a run on three hits in the ninth.

Stat of the Game

.370: Greinke’s batting average after going 3-for-3 with a sacrifice bunt. The three hits established a new career-high and were one fewer than what the D-backs had as an entire team.

Noted

Among those in attendance was Joe Garagiola Jr., the team’s former GM turned senior vice president of standards and on-field operations for Major League Baseball. It was Garagiola who handed down the suspensions following the brawl.

He Said It

“He had everything going. That’s the most dominant we’ve seen him in awhile,” Kirk Gibson said of Greinke, before adding about the Dodgers. “You got to tip your hat to them. Tonight, they played well, all phases of the game. They beat us up.”

What’s Next

Ian Kennedy makes perhaps his most anticipated start of the season. It’s his 17th start, but first start against the Dodgers since his pitch to Greinke sailed high and tight, hitting the right-hander and sparking the bench-clearing brawl. Kennedy (3-4, 5.16 ERA) is 5-3 in 10 career starts against the Dodgers, including 3-1 in four starts at Chase Field, where he will be pitching for the first time since May 15. Los Angeles counters with Ricky Nolasco (5-8, 3.85 ERA), who will be making his Dodgers debut after being acquired from the Marlins over the weekend.

First pitch Tuesday night is 6:40 p.m. with pregame coverage starting at 6:10 p.m. on Arizona Sports 620.

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