The two faces of Chad Billingsley

For the first two innings, he was remarkably similar to the Billingsley of last year: too many pitches, too many deep counts and too many balls absolutely smoked by D-backs hitters because the worked the count to the point that they had an advantage. In the third, though, he settled in and retired the side in order on very few pitches. Honeycutt or Russ Martin or somebody must have said something to him in the dugout. Loney already has a two-run homer. Nomar hasn't had a ball hit to him at 3B yet, but he did scoop a one-hop throw from Martin on a force play ... By the way, just to clarify something. Despite what you might have read on a competing blog, all of the beat writers who travel with the club on a regular basis learned of Nomar's move to 3B at the same time, that being when Grady announced it to us in the dugout yesterday during his pregame media session. Until that point, none of us knew about it. So if one of us chooses to claim on his blog that the story ``was first reported by'' his blog, that simply isn't true -- except in the most technical sense. He got to his computer before I got to mine and clicked on ``post'' a minute or two before I did. Making a claim like that makes it look like the rest of us weren't doing our jobs, and that isn't the case. This is a tough beat, and we all work HARD every single day.