TL;DR: The D-Backs brought out their slugging bats to back an excellent performance from Eduardo Rodriguez for the second sweep in three series.
There are few better antidotes to a frustrating series than a series sweep. I, like many of you, hoped that the team’s sweep of Atlanta last week might provide the kind of spark they so desperately needed. Instead, they themselves were swept by a disappointing Reds team while scoring just six runs in the series. But the team managed to regroup, tighten up their defense, and delivering exactly the kind of performance they had to land in order to keep their season on track.
In his second start back from the IL, Eduardo Rodriguez continued the excellent momentum he started in Cincinnati when he worked five innings of two-run ball before one of the many rain delays ended his night. He worked around traffic a couple times tonight, but kept the Seattle batters off-balance with a fastball-heavy pitch mix and collected 14 swing and misses in his outing. He had just two blemishes – in the visiting half of the first when a would-be inning-ending double play ball was misplayed by Ketel Marte and a bloop single from Jorge Polanco plated Julio Rodriguez for an early Seattle run. He also gave up a solo blast to Donovan Solano to leadoff the fifth, but otherwise found ways to wriggle around any of the baserunners he allowed for an impressive performance overall.
The offense did all of its damage in the sixth inning. They loaded the bases on a pair of leadoff singles from Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte along with a one-out walk to Josh Naylor. That set the table for former Mariner Eugenio Suarez who absolutely crushed a lifeless Bryan Woo slider an impressive 410 feet. It was the team’s eighth grand slam of the season and tied him with Carroll for the team lead for home runs with 19. Even more encouragingly, Pavin Smith tagged another poorly-placed offspeed pitch from Woo for his first home run since late April for the fifth and final Arizona run. If Smith can regain some of the form from April, it would go a long way towards deepening and lengthening their lineup.
Once again, I find myself befuddled by this team. Their performance in Atlanta was inherently impressive – punctuated by that miraculous ninth inning that’s worth rewatching whenever you’re feeling down on the team. But they looked particularly lifeless in Cincinnati in essentially every aspect of the game. And they then came home to put on a solid, if flawed, performance on all of those aspects – especially in the field. So where does that leave us? Probably right where they started: the team has been ravaged by injuries that have exposed some of the flaws that can’t be easily papered over by internal or external fixes. Those problems mean that the team is likely to continue along this tack where they bounce between the extremes. I certainly don’t hope for that and I’m optimistic that Rodriguez’s continued improvement might provide some actual stability in a rotation that has been a surprising weakness.
