Arizona Diamondbacks batter Jake Elmore (14) makes his major league debut in the ninth inning against Washington Nationals at Chase Field. Image: Jennifer Hilderbrand-US PRESSWIRE

Now Demel had experienced some ups and downs with the club during his three year career bouncing between AAA Reno and the Diamondbacks in each year. In his 63 2/3 innings the 27 year old has managed 48 strikeouts with a career WHIP of 1.59. He made just one appearance in 2012 allowing one run on two hits, a walk and one intentional walk. He holds a 4-4 record with a 4.95 ERA in the major leagues.

He had some success at the start of 2011 posting a 1.72 ERA through his first 16 2/3 innings through May but struggled in July posting a 6.75 ERA for the month and never really getting another extended stay with the big league club following that month.

Bottom line, as it stands now, the club is probably not too upset about the departure of Demel to the Astros. But what surprised me was them allowing Jake Elmore to hit the waiver wire.

Jake Elmore was called up from AAA Reno on August 11, 2012 as Willie Bloomquist was hampered by his ailing back. He would play in 30 games and record 68 at bats during that span. While the 25 year old right hander only managed 17 hits (.191 average), I thought Elmore was considered one of the options at shortstop for us in 2013. He was solid at shortstop defensively and was versatile enough to man second base (he was drafted as a 2B) to give Aaron Hill an off day. Not only that, but the Arizona State graduate was ripping up the Pacific Coast League in 2012, his first season at the AAA level. He was named to both the PCL’s mid-season All-Star team and the post season All-Star team for his excellent play.

In 108 games before being called up, he scored 95 runs while sporting a .344/.442/.465 line and collecting 30 doubles, 9 triples and walking 74 times- showing excellent plate discipline. I understand that the PCL is notorious for being hitter friendly (see INF Josh Bell experiment) but with Elmore just coming up on 26 years old in 2013 it seemed like he would be as likely to win the position as Cliff Pennington or the platoon of Willie Bloomquist/ John McDonald.

Chalk it up to the risk a team takes by allowing a minor league prospect to go to waivers even if that club hopes the player will just make it back to their minor league affiliate before being claimed. Good move by the Astros with this waiver pickup in my opinion and good luck to both Elmore and Demel.

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With the playoff hopes of the Arizona Diamondbacks nearing life support, the team can begin to focus on both near-term and long-term goals.  Important decisions will need to be made about certain positions come this offseason.   Third Base and Shortstop are by far the two positions Arizona will need to upgrade before the 2013 season begins.  The D-Backs would be well-served to get a jump on player evaluations by playing Ryan Wheeler and Jake Elmore every day until the end of the season.

August 19, 2012; Houston, TX, USA; D-Backs 3B Ryan Wheeler (21) fields a bunted ball in the first inning against the Astros at Minute Maid Park. Image: Troy Taormina-US PRESSWIRE

At the time of his inital callup, 3B Wheeler was leading the Pacific Coast League in RBI’s with 90.  He is a 2009 fifth round draft pick who was rated the organiztion’s 18th best prospect entering 2012.  Wheeler owns a .313 batting overage over his minor league career.  After coming up to the Bigs on July 20th, Wheeler started almost every game until the D-Backs traded for Chris Johnson on July 29th.  While Johnson has been a productive player for most of his career, he is batting only .237 in the desert and is arbitration-eligible.  Arizona should give Wheeler a long look as his bat would be helpful in an offense in deperate need of production.

At 25, Elmore is a year older than Wheeler and was a 34th round pick of the Snakes in 2008.  He does not have much power but does get on base as his pre-callup .442 OBP average can attest.  He also was hitting .344 and stole 32 bases before coming up on August 11th.  If nothing else, Elmore provides speed to a team that has good, but not great base-stealing threats.  Although Willie Bloomquist provides a nice spark, at 34, he is not the long term answer at Shortstop.  It would be better to give Elmore the at-bats and perhaps bat him leadoff.

Since both players have been at the Big League level, neither Wheeler not Elmore have distinguised themselves.  That is probably a side effect of playing every day at Reno and then playing not so much in Arizona.  Let them play the majority of the remaining 32 games and find out if theuy are the solutions to two nagging problems.  If not, it will be up to GM Kevin Towers  to make the improvements.

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Arizona Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson (23) takes the ball from starting pitcher

I’ll be the first to apologize to the fans that were able to make it out to the Diamondbacks weekend series against the fourth place Padres as there was very little to cheer about in any of the three games. They were shutout Friday, blown out Saturday and failed to come out on top of yet another one run game on Sunday- a game in which they never had the lead. Of course part of the game of baseball is losing. You’re going to lose a lot over the course of a 162 game season; it’s just hard to watch such an uninspiring series against a team with 70 losses in August as you’re the ones that are supposed to be grinding for a playoff spot.

Credit is due to the Padres however, as they’ve now won seven straight games overall and are an impressive 15-9 in August. Their starters pitched effectively and late into games- something not one of our starters got even close to doing.

Transactions: Joe Saunders was dealt to the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday morning for hard throwing right handed reliever Matt Lindstrom and either cash considerations or a player to be named later. Saunders had struggled as of late and is 6-10 with a 4.22 ERA on the season. Lindstrom is 1-0 with a 2.72 ERA in 32 appearances for the Orioles.

Record Notes: With the loss on Sunday, the Dbacks fell back to .500 at 64-64. Their home record sits at 33-31 but they’ve now dropped 10 of their last 14 at Chase Field after winning eight straight contests at home in July. With the sweep, the Padres have now taken a franchise high seven straight from the Diamondbacks which includes two sweeps- the first time the Padres have ever swept the Dbacks at Chase Field.

*With their 5-4 defeat Sunday, the team fell to 10-19 in one-run games, a league worst.

*Friday’s 5-0 defeat marked the fourth time since the All Star break that the offense has been shutout.

GOOD: Justin Upton was one of the bright spots this weekend finishing 4 for 8 with an inside the park homerun on his 25^th birthday. He is now 7 for his last 19 (.368) and has reached base safely in 19 straight games. The homerun was his 10^th on the season, the longest it has ever taken the right fielder to hit his 10^th homerun.

*Aaron Hill hit his 19^th and 20^th homeruns on the year on Saturday and Sunday- his highest total since 2010 when he belted 26. He leads all National League second basemen in homeruns and is tied for second in doubles at his position.  He has also matched his RBI total from 2011 at 61.

*Bullpen. For what they were asked to do in this series, this group of guys did a good job. While they gave up at least one run in each game of the series, they did end up throwing more innings combined than all three starting pitchers combined- 14 innings for the bullpen; 13 for the starters. On both Friday and Sunday they threw 5+ innings allowing just one run in each outing. The issue was that by the time the bullpen was summoned, the Dbacks starters had already given up four runs in each affair.

BAD: RISP. The offense in general was pretty flat but it doesn’t help when you have opportunities to cash in and fail. They were a combined 0-10 with runners in scoring position Friday and Saturday and finished just 2-15 in the category during the series. There were multiple occasions where the Dbacks had a guy on second (or third) with a chance to make some damage and a strikeout would ensue killing any momentum the club had built up.

*Paul Goldschmidt was one of a few that went hitless this series finishing 0 for 7. He did walk four times and score two runs but he is mired in a 2-18 and 6-32 (.188) slump currently. With Goldie collecting zero hits, Montero finishing 2 for 12 and Kubel finishing 0 for 9 you’re not going to see too many runs put up for the Dbacks.

UGLY: Ian Kennedy continues to struggle in 2012 with another ugly outing on Saturday allowing another three homeruns (all solo shots) and walking four hitters on his way to giving up six earned runs in just 5 1/3 innings. In the month of August, the team’s ace has surrendered eight homeruns and sixteen walks posting a 5.60 ERA. He has now matched his career high in homeruns allowed in a season (26) which is also tied for the most allowed by any pitcher in the National League. As he struggles with his control he beaned his eighth batter on the season- a career high. At this point we just have to hope that Kennedy can grind out the remainder of 2012 without enduring some type of arm injury that would hinder his chances of coming back strong in 2013.

*Trevor Cahill was hit hard again on Sunday as he provided the Dbacks with the shortest outing of the season at 3 2/3 innings allowing eight hits and four earned runs. He failed to get out of the first inning unscathed for the 19^th time in 26 starts. His first inning was as follows: groundout, groundout, single, walk, RBI single, RBI single, walk, groundout. There’s definitely something going through Cahill’s head in the first as he really struggles to get three outs without allowing a run- he finished the second by striking out the side.

NOTES: The Padres scored ten of their nineteen runs in the series with two outs.

*Rookie Jake Elmore was 0 for 7 in the series and is now 0 for his last 14. He has yet to record a major league RBI or score a run.

*Paul Goldschmidt hasn’t homered in ten consecutive games, his longest streak without a long ball since he went eleven games from May 12- 26^th.

*The team begins the last three games of their ten game home stand tonight against the Cincinnati Reds. Lefty Tyler Skaggs is making his second career start facing Bronson Arroyo. The Reds have lost three of four but Arroyo comes in on a personal three game winning streak.

Now bring on the Reds!!