Lights Go Out On Diamondbacks Game, Pedro Gomez Briefly Blames Rampaging Baboon

Top of the sixth, tie game, men on second and third, and the lights went out in Phoenix:

I’m sorry, what? That is awesome.

Oh. Darn.

A haboob, also a fun word, brought dust, wind, and rains through the Phoenix area and knocked out power to about 100,000 residents, including the Diamondbacks. The delay lasted 21 minutes, and when play resumed, Jorge De La Rosa immediately walked Delino DeShields, and then just two pitches later allowed a go-ahead single to Willie Calhoun.

“The delay may have gotten to him,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said of De La Rosa. “Twenty-one minutes may have been too long to sit and wait, but he said that he felt good so we ran him back out there.”

Lovullo blamed the delay.

“It was the crunch-time part of the game,” Lovullo said of the outage. “I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the pitch and then you’ve got to pull back and kind of stop the momentum of what’s going on.

“The timing for me couldn’t have been any worse. … I felt like it could have been a different outcome had that not happened.”

Except, the D-backs tied the game up in their half of the inning, before surrendering the lead for good on a Rougned Odor home run in the seventh. The Rangers pulled away to win 9-5, as the Diamondbacks’ bullpen blew its third lead in the last six games.

Relief is Arizona’s most glaring weakness, and last week’s acquisition of Matt Andriese from the Rays hasn’t paid dividends just yet: Andriese took the loss last night, and has allowed four earned runs and three home runs in four innings of work with his new club.