The Arizona Diamondbacks matched the Baltimore Orioles with the worst record in baseball last season, with both clubs finishing 52-110.
With 49 games left in the 2022 season, the Diamondbacks have a chance to eclipse that win total on Sunday in the series finale against the Colorado Rockies in Denver.
Arizona evened its three-game series with Colorado at one win apiece with a 6-0 victory on Saturday.
Left-hander Tommy Henry (1-1, 3.75 ERA) will square off against Colorado righty Ryan Feltner (2-3, 6.02) in the series finale.
Henry lost his major league debut at Cleveland on Aug. 3 but bounced back with a strong performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday. He gave up just one run and four hits in seven innings versus the Pirates to earn his first win.
Sunday will be the first time he has faced the Rockies. If he pitches as well as he did on Tuesday, there’s a strong chance the Diamondbacks surpass last year’s win total.
“Any given day, when you watch our club, we talk about playing good defense. I think we’ve done that and higher rate this year and we continue to get better at it,” bench coach Jeff Banister said.
“When we do that, we play good defense and make good decisions with the baseball, that allows our pitching staff an opportunity to be able to manage the game from the mound and we don’t put those two extra efforts on them.”
Colorado is 3-2 on a six-game homestand that ends Sunday. With Kris Bryant on the injured list, the Rockies called up longtime minor leaguer Wynton Bernard to make his major league debut Friday night.
Bernard was on Colorado’s radar when manager Bud Black saw him and Connor Joe in the winter of 2020. The organization signed both players.
Joe made his debut in 2021 and has been with the Rockies all of this season but has struggled lately. He was hitting .277 at the end of June, however a .162 batting average in July and .071 mark in August have changed the complexion of his season.
Black said Joe has not talked about being fatigued — “that’s how players are wired,” Black said — but opposing pitchers may have learned how to beat him in an at-bat.
“He’s played a lot this year so you could speculate that, for sure,” Black said. “As far as the book, the book grows on every player, the more at-bats they get, the more games they play, it’s an expanding book on each and every player. And there are adjustments. It’s fair to say they’re pitching him tougher, but he’ll adjust.”
Feltner has yet to face the Diamondbacks but is coming off his second win of the season.
He allowed five runs on four hits in 5 2/3 innings in a 16-5 win over St. Louis on Tuesday. He was gifted a 12-run lead before the Cardinals broke through in the fifth inning.
–Field Level Media
