It's a regular season clash at Chase Field in Phoenix starting at 9:40 PM EDT, courtesy of MLB.TV and DBACKS.TV, where the Phillies' Jesus Luzardo (LHP, #44) and the Diamondbacks' Eduardo Rodriguez (LHP, #57) will arm-wrestle in the cold desert night air. You could mistake these deux ex machina for twins separated at birth; Luzardo has the arm with 203 strikeouts, while Rodriguez is quietly logging 119, proving that sometimes you need volume, and other times, you just need to be the guy who doesn't embarrass himself twice.
The stats are painfully close—Philadelphia sits at a .243 average against Arizona's .244, and their ERAs of 4.05 and 4.18 are basically rounding errors for the sportswriter who wants a narrative. With Rafael Marchan and Caleb Kilian off the Phillies' roster, expect the lineup to lean on the fact that everyone is averaging twenty-four somethings, which is baseball-speak for "pleading for mercy." Drop your prediction in the StreakChat feed if you've had enough of this statistical deadlock for one night.