Foresights, Five Sights

PHOENIX-- Whatever TV programmer had the merciful foresight not to televise episode 4 of this week's serial Diamondbacks collapse deserves high praise. A newspaperman, however, paid to witness the Labor Day debacle, best summed up the team's recent play and September prospects:   

These days, no lead is too large, no inning too late, for the Diamondbacks to squander. In Washington, they had leads in the eighth inning in three straight games. They lost all three times. On Monday, they led 5-0 after the fifth. They let in six runs in the sixth inning.

Thanks to that kind TV programmer, Phoenicians were spared the petulant, head cocked to one side, fingers strumming through the hair freak show that Bob Melvin's postgame press conferences have become. But we were not spared this with our morning Earl Grey:

"It's frustrating for everybody," manager Bob Melvin said. "We come out and play hard every day and in three games the eighth inning gets us and then today a different inning."

Or this:

"He [ E. Gonzalez] doesn't give up a hard-hit ball until the ball Borchard hit. Up to that point, it was as well as he pitched all year."

Oh yeah, those innings, especially those eighth innings, they'll coldcock you if you're not careful. And rest assured that the sixth inning, when his starter ( who rarely reaches the sixth) yielded six runs to lose a five run lead and the game, wasn't Bob's fault either.

Huh?

Melvin is fresh off squandering four consecutive games in improbable, indeed historic, fashion by making almost every wrong move imaginable, yet his team is A) sufficiently motivated (they "play hard every day"), and B) they are the victim of innings (rather than, say, better managed opponents). 

Anyone else see a fifth consecutive loss in their sights?