By Nick Piecoro | Arizona Republic
The Diamondbacks were on the wrong end of a rules interpretation on Thursday night, a mistake by the umpiring crew that might have helped turn an already bad inning into a particularly ugly one. Or maybe it didn’t. It’s hard to say.
But what seems crystal clear about their 8-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants was that the game was lost long before manager Torey Lovullo was fed “misinformation” – in the parlance of crew chief Bill Welke – in the seventh inning. It was lost in the first. Or maybe the second. Or the third. Take your pick, really.
In the first, the Diamondbacks loaded the bases against Madison Bumgarner and came up empty. They loaded them again in the second and scored only once. They put runners on second and third in the third but couldn’t produce a clutch hit.
