RHP Kennedy placed on IL with calf injury
In the eighth inning Sunday, Ian Kennedy was removed after facing one batter due to discomfort in his right calf.
Now, he’s been placed on the 15-day injured list with right calf inflammation.
Manager Torey Lovullo said that Kennedy’s calf was still bothering him when he arrived at the ballpark Monday morning, leading him to undergo imaging. At the time of Lovullo’s pre-game press conference, the results of that imaging were not yet known. Two hours later, Kennedy was placed on the IL, indicating that imaging revealed the problem to be more serious than simply being a result of spending three days at altitude in Denver, as the Diamondbacks first theorized.
In Kennedy’s absence, Lovullo said the Diamondbacks will fill the set-up role by committee, depending on matchups and game situation.
On the season, Kennedy has mostly been effective, with a 3.58 ERA. However, his expected ERA — based on launch angles and exit velocities — is 5.34. He’s also walking more batters per nine innings than he has in any year since 2008.
Get familiar with the Giants
On Monday afternoon, the Diamondbacks
played their 80th game of the season. It was also, in a bizarre scheduling quirk, the first time that they’ve played the San Francisco Giants.
As NL West rivals, the Diamondbacks and Giants play each other 19 times a year. Typically, the first of those matchups comes in April or early May. Now, all 19 will be condensed into the next 80 games. For the rest of the year, nearly 23% of the Diamondbacks’ games are against San Francisco.
It’s also by far the latest in the season that the Diamondbacks have played their first game against a divisional opponent.
The previous mark came in 2004, when they played their first game against the Dodgers on May 28.
“Very untraditional,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “… We're entering our fourth month of baseball and we haven't seen a team in our division. Which tells me one thing, we're gonna see them a lot in the second half. We're fine with that. We're excited to play them.”
In the Diamondbacks clubhouse, players were well aware of the scheduling oddity.
“I don't know if I've played a team this many times in such a small stretch,” infielder Josh Rojas said. Reliever Sean Poppen also hasn’t experienced anything quite like this. He suggested that it could pose a challenge for starting pitchers as batters will gain an intimate familiarity with their repertoires.
Rojas, though, wasn’t sure how much of an advantage that will be.
“I've always had this debate on facing guys multiple times,” Rojas said. “It can be an advantage, it can be a disadvantage either way. It depends who's changing their gameplan more, it depends who's doing their homework. If a pitcher decides to pitch you the same way, it's gonna be our advantage. If they decide to constantly mix it up, it's gonna be their advantage.”
Hummel’s unusual splits
Taken as a whole, Cooper Hummel’s season has been mediocre. In 109 major league at-bats, his OPS is just .635 — a far cry from the success he’s had in Triple-A over the past two years.
Within those season stats, though, lies unusual splits. When he’s played in the field, Hummel has a .280/.320/.530 slash line in 58 at-bats. But in 42 at-bats as a designated hitter, he’s slashed .095/.283/.119. As a pinch hitter, he’s been even worse, going 0-for-12 with five walks.
When a reporter asked Hummel about those splits on Monday, he broke into a smile and nodded. “I’m fully aware,” Hummel said, noting that his family’s joked about his struggles as a DH. As for pinch-hitting, he called it, “the hardest thing to do in sports.”
For the most part, Hummel is unconcerned by the splits. “The sample size is so small, I just think the numbers are probably a little skewed from that,” he said. However, he did acknowledge that being a designated hitter lends itself to overthinking.
“When you get a minute to get out of the dugout and go play defense, your mind's on something else,” Hummel said. “Otherwise, you're like, okay, he did this, this and this to me last at-bat, now what is he gonna do? And I've got two or three innings to think about that.”