Arizona Diamondbacks Close Out Season With A Loss
By Mario Hicks
The Arizona Diamondbacks took on the St. Louis Cardinals in the finale game of their season. Within minutes of the game starting, it seemed like Sunday’s D-backs-Cardinals game might just play a role in deciding how the National League Central race finished up.
Ultimately, the game was won by the St. Louis Cardinals, but after the Reds beat the Pirates, the game changed and felt more like a Spring Training matchup.
Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright, who was scheduled to start, stopped warming in the bullpen and St. Louis manager Mike Matheny made multiple changes to his lineup, taking out a lot of his veterans to give them some rest before the NL Division Series begins Friday.
No one apparently told Josh Collmenter that the game no longer mattered, as the right-hander turned in eight impressive innings, allowing the one run on three hits while striking out three.
The Diamondbacks’ offense struggled to do much of anything against the five Cardinals pitchers.
The Cardinals broke the scoreless tie when Pete Kozma led off the sixth with a double and eventually scored on Kolten Wong’s groundout.
With the loss, the last-place D-backs finished the season with a 64-98 record, the second-most losses in franchise history behind the 2004 team, which lost 111. That was also the last year the D-backs finished at the bottom of the standings.
In fact, Arizona finished with the worst record in baseball and therefore will pick first in the 2015 First-Year Player Draft.
All of this resulted to the firing of general manager, Kevin Towers and manger Kirk Gibson.