The D’backs (20-15) got off to a strong start in the four-game set with the Phils (16-20), taking the opener 2-1 in a pitcher’s duel. Patrick Corbin was once again stellar for the D’backs and Heath Bell made his first appearance as the announced closer, shutting down the Phils in the ninth for his fourth save of the season.

The Phillies are 25th in the league in runs per game, 3.66, on offense and even worse on the road, 3.18. This is the first series between the two teams this season. In 2012, the Phillies were on the right end of a six-game set, winning four of the six games.

With three games still ahead, the D’backs would like nothing more to continue their four-game win streak. Here’s how it sets up.

Game 1 (Friday): Ian Kennedy (1-3, 5.19 ERA) vs. Tyler Cloyd (0-0, —-)

In his last time out, Kennedy had such a “IPK” outing that it was almost cliche. He went seven innings, fighting through three walks and seven hits given up. But he also gave up for runs in those seven innings. That seems to be the norm for Kennedy the past 12 months. He doesn’t have an out pitch, leaving him with very few options when trying to run through a lineup three times. He has three quality starts this season, two outings where he gave up four runs and another where he gave up six. He also only has one “stellar” start, which I define as seven innings or longer, giving up two runs or less. Cloyd, taking DL’d Roy Halladay‘s spot on the rotation, will be making his 2013 debut. He started six games for the Phillies in 2012, going 2-2 with a 4.91 ERA. With the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs of the International League this season, he’s gone 1-3 with a 5.40 ERA; however, he has an 8.2 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 in 35 innings.

Game 2 (Saturday): Trevor Cahill (2-3, 2.80) vs Cliff Lee (3-2, 3.26)

Quietly, Cahill has been absolutely dominant after his first two starts of the season. He’s thrown 27.1 innings since then, and has only allowed five runs in those outings. Though, his most strike outs came in those first two games of the season where he allowed seven runs in 10.2 innings. Somebody let @cantpredictball know on Twitter. Lee has been the Phillies’ best pitcher this year out of the big three (Lee, Halladay and Cole Hamels), which would be okay if he was his usual dominant self. Instead, he’s been good, even great, but not exceptional. In his previous three outings combined, he’s thrown 19 innings and allowed 10 runs. His control of the strike zone has remained stellar, though, only walking five the entire season.

Game 3 (Sunday): Brandon McCarthy (0-3, 6.75) vs. Kyle Kendrick (4-1, 2.45)

McCarthy threw his first quality start of the season his last time out, a 5-3 win over the Dodgers on May 7. But it was the quality start that I believe shouldn’t count. He lasted only 6.1 innings and allowed three earned. It was his best outing of the season with a doubt, though. He’s been incredibly unlucky with BABIP against so far, with a unsustainable .385 mark against him. League average is .300 and most pitchers will be fairly close to that, some above, some below, but nothing even close to that high. That bad luck continued in his previous outing. He struck out three, walked one and still gave up eight hits in 27 batters faced, giving him a .348 BABIP in the game. That’s obviously a tiny sample size and any one game can be much higher and much lower for pitchers, but at some point, McCarthy’s going to start getting a tad luckier. That being said, his other peripheral numbers aren’t stellar right now. I’ll have a more detailed post up on Sunday. If Lee has been the best Phils’ starter of the big three, Kendrick has been the best pitcher of the entire staff. He’s on a streak of five straight starts of at least six innings and two runs or less, including a complete-game shut out on April 26 against the Mets. In his last outing, he went seven innings, allowed two runs on six hits and struck out six.

Is Cole Hamels just getting unlucky? Or is it something else?

Unlucky.  Cole has had plenty of issues with run support before, and with bad luck, so combined with a slow start, he’s been pretty ineffective.  Especially for a guy we made such a big deal about signing for six more years.

The stuff’s in there.  We could just really use some more blatant examples of it recently, with so much less potent of a rotation backing him up.

Should Ryan Howard scare opposing fans anymore?

Absolutely.  Have you seen that contract?  They tell stories about it around the bonfire at training camp.

What’s the upside of this team? The downside?

The upside is that we have Cole locked up, Freddy Galvis is youthful and full of vigor, Chase seems to be hitting okay, and Cliff Lee is here.  The downside is that Chooch, Doc, and Chase are all up for reassignment, the team in general is not very good, Ben Revere looks more and more like a complete bust, the parts of the bullpen that work are wastes of money if the other parts of the bullpen that aren’t working continue to not work, and everybody’s only getting older.

Also, it’s all Charlie Manuel or Ruben Amaro‘s fault, depending on the day.

Why do the Phillies’ brass seem perplexed as to why their lineup doesn’t take walks? 

Related, have they heard of baseball reference before?

I’d say probably no.  Ruben Amaro shows a staggering absence of intelligence at times, for a guy who seems to have it all figured out.  His lack of belief in walks and the organizations disbelief in modern stats is sickening at times, and probably why some players (AHEM Dom Brown) have been mishandled in the recent past.

How mad are you at Kevin Towers for giving your divisional rival a christmas present of Justin Upton?

I would be pretty mad, but honestly, we’ve got about 1,000 problems to worry about before we can fathom taking on the Braves, let alone Upton.  Then again, he is an individual example of the Braves as a whole – lot of home runs, lot of strike outs.  They’re gonna hack.  And it’s already bringing them back down to earth.

Is Michael Young as classy as everyone says he is?

I’ll say sure.  But I was never worried about that.

If he could convince a ground ball to hop into his glove using that keen sense of clubhouse leadership, that’d be great.  But they’re usually moving too fast.

His questions and my answers:

So is Ian Kennedy going to be a problem or can we depend on his location sputtering out again?

This, sadly, is what we can expect from Kennedy. He’s been pretty mediocre for the past 12 months. And that’s mostly been tied to his lack of command with the fastball. While he isn’t walking a ton of people, he also grooves way too many to be effective.

J.J. Putz has decided to take some time off to be injured.  How reliable is the Dbacks bullpen now?  Express in terms of Chad Durbins.

I believe I saw that Putz was heading to the Dominican for a couple of months. I can’t confirm that, but nonetheless, it’s a weird time to take a vaca. However, I believe the bullpen should still be (just a tad) better than one Chad Durbin. David Hernandez has had a couple of shaky outings but has been pretty good and should get better. And outside of Heath Bell‘s first appearance, he’s been (stunningly) pretty good. Combined with Brad Ziegler and Matt Reynolds, the pen should be in decent shape still.

Is it correct to say Paul Goldschmidt is “becoming a star?”  And if so, what kind of a star; one that shines brightly for a long time, or when that grows too big and kills a lot of people?

He’s a star that’s going to kill a lot of people. Just not in the way you were meaning. I think he singlehandedly murdered Tim Lincecum‘s career and is in the process of burying the corpse of Chris Capuano now. He’s been a revelation. He’s improved his walk and strikeout rate, chase percentage and his fielding immensely over the past couple of seasons. He’s approaching top three first baseman in the league quickly.

Lie to me.  What do you think of this team without Roy Halladay?

They’re great. One of the best staffs that can’t pitch and one of the best lineups that can’t walk (or score) I’ve ever seen.

Is there a young prospect with a better name than “Didi Gregorius” in baseball right now?

Xander Bogaerts is a pretty dang good name. Adeiny Hechavarria? Basically all shortstops in baseball it looks like.

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Mike Zagurski (49) pitches during the game against the Washington Nationals in the ninth inning at Chase Field. Image: Jennifer Stewart-US PRESSWIRE

Transactions: The Dbacks were forced to make a few moves over the weekend that saw Josh Collmenter head to the disabled list with ulcers and a recall of right hander Brad Bergeson from Triple-A Reno. They also had to place Willie Bloomquist on the DL with a back issue that has hampered him for a couple weeks now. To fill his roster spot they promoted infielder Jake Elmore to make his major league debut for the club. The other move was a matter of choice as they [finally] designated Mike Zagurski for assignment while recalling right hander Bryan Shaw.

Record Notes: The team is playing .500 ball lately and still sits one game above .500 on the season at 58-57 but lost a game to the first place Giants and now trail them by five games. They have won three series, lost three series, and split three [four game] series in the second half of the season.

*With their 9-1 loss on Friday night, the team fell to 1-39 in games in which they scored two or fewer runs.

*With their 6-5 loss on Saturday night the team dropped to a major league worst 8-17 in one run games on the year and have lost five straight one run affairs.

GOOD: Patrick Corbin put together another impressive start on Sunday working seven innings while allowing just four hits and two earned runs. He didn’t walk a batter, collected seven strikeouts and at one point retired sixteen straight Nationals hitters. The 23 year old rookie has been excellent in August posting an ERA of 1.89 and a 2-0 record in nineteen innings of work.

*Bryan Shaw returned to the Diamondbacks bullpen Saturday night after being demoted on July 20^th and he didn’t disappoint striking out the side in the seventh inning. J.J. Putz came in during the ninth on Sunday and retired the final two hitters to record his 13^th consecutive save and 22^nd overall.

*Aaron Hill’s bat livened over the weekend as he collected a pair of doubles and his first homerun in 20 games. He also drove in his first run in the month of August.

BAD: Trevor Cahill was mediocre yet again on Friday as he surrendered two homeruns and four earned runs over six innings of work. Cahill has failed to win consecutive starts in nine consecutive appearances now dating back to June 3^rd. He has given up at least three runs in seven of those nine starts.

*Paul Goldschmidt began the series 0 for 9 on Friday and Saturday before finally breaking through with a clutch performance on Sunday as he went 2 for 4 with three RBI’s and a stolen base. Goldie is mired in a 3 for 20 mini-slump right now but hopefully Sunday’s effort will get the first baseman rolling again. His eleventh stolen base on the year leads all National League first baseman and is tied for the most in MLB at his position.

UGLY: Takashi Saito suffered another abbreviated outing on Sunday lasting just 1/3 of an inning while giving up three hits and a pair of runs before being pulled. In his last three outings the right hander has working just 1 1/3 innings while allowing six hits and four earned runs including a homerun. His ERA has skyrocketed over 6.00 (6.14) and his struggles are coming at an inconvenient time as the team is making a “push” for a playoff spot.

*Mike Zagurski was again hit hard on Friday night allowing four earned runs on four hits- three doubles- as pitching coach Charles Nagy and Gibby let the left hander grind his way through one of the worst innings he’s thrown all season- he allowed four earned runs in 2/3 inning on June 20^th. With the game virtually out of reach everyone was forced to watch the 29 year old painfully battle hitter after hitter and without a reliever warming up. The outing sent Zagurski’s ERA over 6.00 on the year (6.18) and prompted his demotion to Triple-A Reno the following day. The Dbacks now have zero left handed relievers in their bullpen with Zagurski’s demotion and the Craig Breslow trade at the deadline.

*Chris Johnson came back to reality during his first series at the friendly confines of Chase Field. He collected just one hit in eleven at bats and misplayed a couple balls being credited with his 16^th & 17^th errors on the year. Since he blasted a pair of homeruns against the Pirates last Tuesday, the third baseman is just 4 for 20 (.200) with six strikeouts. He did still knock in two runs over the weekend pushing his RBI total as a Diamondback to 18 in just 13 games. While the offensive downfall isn’t concerning considering how well he has been, the defensive mishaps are something the defense [and pitching staff] cannot afford. He has already committed four errors in his time as a Diamondback.

*Team Defense. What a horrible display of fielding once again this weekend as the club tacked on another three error game Saturday night on their way to committing five errors over the three games. It was their second consecutive series with five errors and they now have eleven errors in just their last eight games. Still, even with their recent struggles on the field the defense sports the tenth best fielding percentage in all of baseball at .984- the MLB leading Mariners have a .990 percentage.

NOTES: *Arizona State alumni Jake Elmore made his major league debut on Saturday night as a pinch hitter coming to the plate with runners on first and second and one out. It was a quality at bat as he saw four pitches before flying out to right field for the second out.

*The Dbacks have seen some difficult opponents in their last five series with the Mets, Dodgers, Phillies, Pirates and Nationals finishing 9-8 during that span. All but the Phillies are either the division leader or contending for at least a playoff spot with under 50 games to go. In the Phillies series the team was dealt the hand of Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee in the final two matchups, two of the toughest starters in baseball when they are hitting their spots. As the team travels to St. Louis to start a three game set Tuesday night, they will be faced with yet another tough opponent that has fared very well against the Dbacks as of late.

*Ian Kennedy will take the hill tomorrow evening to try to rectify his poor outing against the Pirates and take game one that will kick off their nine game road trip. In Kennedy’s first start against the Cardinals earlier this summer he was hit hard in the first two innings allowing six earned runs on two homeruns but was able to shut down their offense after the second to throw seven complete innings.

Now bring on the Cardinals!!

Follow me on Twitter at @ndougherty313 and our team at @venomstrikes.

 Sidenote: This awesomeness kicks off Wednesday in Long Beach, CA: http://vimeo.com/40057950