Dodgers @ D’backs May 17, 2014: Another New Starter To Face

The Diamondbacks are still in last place, and now they have to deal with Tony LaRussa, hired today as Arizona’s “Chief Baseball Officer,” in charge of all of baseball operations. Your thoughts on LaRussa aside — and I have many, few positive — there’s little question that this can’t be seen as good news for GM Kevin Towers or manager Kirk Gibson, the leaders of this sinking ship. LaRussa is expected to meet with the pair today, and while I certainly wouldn’t expect any moves immediately, you do imagine that the clock is ticking — especially if this report that the team is already interviewing GM candidates is true. (Remember when there were rumors about the Dodgers and LaRussa? This… is better.)

	Dodgers			D’Backs
	5:10pm PT			Phoenix, AZ
2B	Gordon		CF	Pollock
RF	Puig		SS	Owings
SS	Ramirez		1B	Goldschmidt
1B	Gonzalez		2B	Hill
CF	Kemp		LF	Ross
LF	Crawford		RF	Marte
3B	Uribe		2B	Pennington
C	Ellis		C	Gosewich
P	Kershaw (L)		P	Anderson (R)

Of course, maybe neither of them would be in this position if the could just manage to be respective against the Dodgers, having lost eight of nine games against Los Angeles this year. Against everyone else, the D’Backs are 15-20, which is still bad, but not quite as embarrassingly bad.

Oh, and they have Chase Anderson on the mound, making his second career start against the mighty Clayton Kershaw. Then again, I laugh as though the Dodgers don’t always have a tough time against young pitchers they’re seeing for the first time, like we saw with Anthony DeSclafani last week.

Besides, it should be noted that this is a thing that Anderson can do with his changeup:

…which is not unimpressive.

Anyway, Andre Ethier won’t get the chance to find out, as the lineup Don Mattingly rolls out today has become more or less the “regular.” Aaron Hill is out of the Arizona lineup with a sore shoulder, per the team.

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