TL;DR: The D-Backs were literally and figuratively knocked around in a lopsided affair.
This year’s D-Backs have suffered a lot of painful, dramatic losses so far this season. But in so many instances, they were able to rebound from those losses with a solid effort if not a win. Unfortunately, tonight was not one of those nights. Instead, the team had far too many non-competitive at-bats while the pitching staff failed to find a single answer to the top of the Blue Jays’ lineup.
After the bullpen’s latest late-inning blowup last night, the D-Backs desperately needed Eduardo Rodriguez to provide some quality length to limit the exposure to the relief staff. Instead, he struggled with his command and couldn’t escape the fifth inning. He was able to limit the damage to a pair of runs on the night, but even that didn’t come very easily as he had just one clean inning on the night. Bo Bichette continued to set the tone for Toronto as he demolished the second pitch he saw to straightaway center for his 10th homer on the year and an early Blue Jays’ lead. It was forgivable given the year Bichette is having and the capabilities he’s shown in the course of his career, but after a mostly clean second inning, Rodriguez reverted to the poor form he showed prior to his IL stint.
The third started innocently enough with a leadoff single from Tyler Heineman and a harmless flyout from Bichette. But a double from Addison Barger and an intentional walk to Vladimir Guerrero Jr loaded the bases for Alejandro Kirk who struckout on a questionable called third strike for the second out. Just as you thought Rodriguez might wriggle out of the jam however, George Springer plated the second Toronto run on one of the most obvious catcher interference calls I’ve ever seen as you can audibly hear the two sounds on the broadcast.
Frustratingly, after finally having his first clean inning in the home half of the fourth, Rodriguez immediately created another jam for himself by loading the bases on a pair of leadoff singles from Bichette and Barger along with a walk to Guerrero Jr. Thankfully, Kirk continued his ignominy at the plate by promptly dribbling a ball directly to Eugenio Suarez who immediately nabbed the runner coming into score. Rodriguez struckout Springer to end his outing and yield to Tayler Scott who dispatched Ernie Clement on his first pitch to pull a true Houdini by stranding the bases loaded and no outs. The Blue Jays would put the game out of reach in the sixth and seventh when they plated six more runs on six hits, three walks, and a hit by pitch. It extended the nightmare that has been Kevin Ginkel’s 2025 campaign and put to bed any hopes of another magical comeback that has become a staple of this D-Backs club.
If you’ve noticed a certain paucity in offensive highlights for the D-Backs in this recap, you’re not mistaken. There weren’t many to be had tonight. Josh Naylor – who may be playing himself out of Phoenix – and Lourdes Gurriel Jr had two-thirds of the six Arizona hits as even a reconfigured lineup couldn’t make much of a difference against a posse of Toronto pitchers. For the second night in a row, the D-Backs could not find the big hit as they are just 3-for-18 with runners in scoring position in the series and have stranded an impressive 17 baserunners in the first two games. Even worse, while the top of the Toronto lineup had a combined eight hits, four walks, and six RBIs, their Arizona counterparts managed just three hits, one walk, and one RBI – a sacrifice groundout from Gurriel Jr in the sixth to plate Corbin Carroll.
We’re now rapidly approaching the halfway point of the season. It’s no longer accurate to talk about how much baseball is left to allow for course corrections. Similarly, we can’t try to brush off the disappointments by talking about how early it is in the season and we don’t know what this team is. We know who this team is – or at least what they’ve been whittled down to by injury. They’re a wildly inconsistent and extremely entertaining team that have been absolutely decimated by pitching injuries and poor regression which might sink their season and has kept them stuck in neutral for most of the year. I’m by no means suggesting that the season is over – there is quite literally more than half a season to play and even after today’s loss, they find themselves just 3.5 games back of a wild card spot. And we’ve all seen what even a deeply flawed team with iffy pitching can do in a short series like the playoffs. The looming question: will this team even get a chance to show what they can do in one of those short series?
