TL;DR: A punchless offense and one bad Corbin Burnes’ pitch doomed a series win in the rubber game.
There are countless examples of teams – including this one – “flushing” a bad loss and coming back the next game with a renewed spirit. That was not quite the case tonight as the offensive woes continued for the D-Backs in a game whose pitching matchup certainly favored them on paper. Through parts of this game, it resembled an old-school pitching matchup with both starters cruising and facing the minimum number of batters in several innings. Combined, the two managed to induce 31 swings and misses as Dustin May’s sweeper and sinker combination kept Arizona’s batters completely off-balance and unsure across his six-inning outing.
After last night’s painful late collapse, the D-Backs were desperate to get their offense started early. Unfortunately, it never really got out of the starting gate all night. They collected seven hits and a walk in the game, but failed to string any of them together. There were just two innings that featured more than one hit – the sixth and the seventh – but they had just one extra base hit for the game in Ketel Marte’s majestic solo blast in the fourth. Instead, they failed to get a single hit in their measly three at bats with runners in scoring position and stranded seven runners, including a crucial second run at third with less than two outs.
Their best scoring opportunity came in the sixth when consecutive one-out singles by Gabriel Moreno and Josh Naylor put runners on the corners for Eugenio Suarez who had already collected a pair of singles in the game. Sadly, May got him to weakly popup and then induced a routine groundout from Pavin Smith to end the threat. Ironically, the team has been quite strong in situations with a runner at third and less than two outs as they’ve posted a .295/.325/.557 slash line including 21 sacrifice flies, but it wasn’t to be tonight.
At least the D-Backs’ pitching came to play. Corbin Burnes had a rough introduction in his Arizona tenure with an ERA approaching six and a WHIP of two. But after those first two starts, he has been every bit the ace they expected him to be when they inked him over the offseason. In his last six starts, he’s pitched to an ERA of 1.74 and a WHIP of 1.074. Even better, he extended a scoreless streak he started back in New York all the way to 21.2 IP before finally yielding his only blemish on the night: a towering three-run homer to straightaway center field by Teoscar Hernandez.
Just eleven days ago, Burnes put together a signature outing with seven scoreless innings against these same Dodgers. Tonight, through the first five-plus innings, he looked even better – keeping LA hitless through the first three-plus innings and not allowing a baserunner into scoring position until that fateful sixth inning. The Dodger hitters appeared completely flummoxed as Burnes collected 17 swings and misses on the outing including nine on a curveball that almost looked untouchable. Even more encouragingly, he managed to walk just one batter, a problem he’s been trying to resolve throughout the season as he deals with a career-high walk rate.
On a macro level, there are certainly some positive takeaways including some excellent starting pitching in the series against the Dodgers. Their starters covered 18 innings and gave up just seven runs on ten hits They also limited LA’s top three to a combined 11-for-37 (.297 batting average) with “just” three homers in the series. Given the talent level the three of them bring to the game, I will absolutely count that as a victory. The team now continues their roadtrip with a weekend series out in St. Louis where they hope to break out of the win-loss-win pattern they seem to find themselves in far too often this season. Let’s hope they’re able to flush this entire series and start fresh on Friday.
