Giants @ Diamondbacks, 8/15

You might remember Alex Young’s major league debut. It came against the Giants. He allowed one run in five innings and struck out five. He came into the game having posted a 5.96 ERA in Triple-A. He’s had two bad starts out of seven, the most recent of which was last week against the Dodgers: 4 earned runs in 3.1 innings with a home run allowed.

The challenge will be to see if the Giants’ lineup against left-handed pitching has improved since they last faced Young.

CF — Jarrod Dyson
RF — Josh Rojas
2B — Eduardo Escobar
LF — David Peralta
1B — Christian Walker
3B — Jake Lamb
SS — Nick Ahmed
C — Carson Kelly
SP — Alex Young

Rojas came over in the Greinke trade with Houston. Ketel Marte, the fifth-most valuable player in baseball, has the night off.

SS — Donovan Solano
RF — Austin Slater
C — Buster Posey
3B — Evan Longoria
CF — Kevin Pillar
2B — Scooter Gennett
LF — Joey Rickard
1B — Brandon Belt
SP — Dereck Rodríguez

This will be Rodriguez’s 20th game of the season. He appeared in 21 games last season. He’s been much, much worse than last year, of course, with a 5.32 ERA (5.40 FIP). His 20th game is his 10th road game of 2019 (seventh start). He’s got a home/road split worth examining, despite the small sample:

HOME: 0-4, 5.79 ERA, 28.0 IP 1.50 K/BB 1.57 WHIP
ROAD: 4-2, 4.95 ERA, 36.1 IP 1.85 K/BB 1.40 WHIP

So... maybe... tonight won’t be a total disaster?