Our righty OF/DH was traded to the Royals in the middle of the game.
This one was pretty awful from the get-go, frankly. According to ISH’s series preview, this game looked on paper like it would be our easiest win of the series, thanks to Pirates starter Austin Heaney’s truly dismal recent performance (he came into this game rocking a 14.00 ERA in three July starts). Meanwhile, Merrill Kelly has been mostly solid if not spectacular, and It certainly seemed like with a modicum of run support he would likely have this in the bag.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. There would be no run support.
Ketel Marte singled on the infield to lead off the game. James McCann was hit in the second inning by a Heaney breaking pitch that just grazed the shoelaces on his back foot. McCann golfed a bloop single to right in the fifth. That was it against Heaney. Seriously.
Merrill Kelly seemed a bit shaky at times, but aside from Tommy Pham reaching on a Eugenio Suarez error to start the bottom of the second and Oneil Cruz launching the second pitch he saw over the right field wall, Kelly did his job perfectly well. 2-0 Pittsburgh
Given the abject failure of the offense to do anything against Heaney and anything against the Pirates bullpen, it turns out that the main significant event of the ballgame came while the Diamondbacks were hitting in the top of the fifth, when the broadcast noticed that Grichuk, who had been preparing to return to his position in right field for the bottom of the frame was instead getting a lot of hugs and handshakes from teammates and putting his glove back in its cubicle in the dugout:
Sad times, though not terribly surprising. It also doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that a number of players on the team, especially those who hadn’t experienced something like that in-game before and/or those whose names are also being kicked around in the Trade Deadline rumor mill, might have been a little bit rattled. Not that you could really notice in terms of what they were doing on the field, because they continued to do what they’d been doing before they suddenly had to say goodbye to Randal, which is to say nothing.
We had a few chances against the Pirates bullpen, but other than back-to-back two-out singles by Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. and Suarez in the top of the sixth and a one out walk by Geraldo Perdomo in the top of the eighth, we achieved nothing.
At least our pitching was solid today. Kelly, as noted, was good aside from the Oneil Cruz in the second, and he pitched into the seventh to finish with a pitching line of 62⁄3 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 1 HR, 3 K and 1 BB with 99 pitches thrown. Andrew Saalfrank finished up the seventh and Kendall Graveman pitched a scoreless eighth, but all that good pitching work was squandered by the missing in action offense.
Loss Probability Added, courtesy of Fangraphs
There were really no particular standouts in the WPA area, revealing this game as a true group effort. So instead of individuals, I will give you the aggregates.
Pitching (Kelly, Saalfrank, Graveman): +6.7% WPA
Offense (Everyone else): -56.7% WPA
That just goes to show that even with stellar pitching performances, it presents a nearly insurmountable challenge to win a baseball game without scoring any runs at all. Go figure.
Anyhow, it was actually a pretty well-attended Gameday Thread, especially for a Saturday afternoon start time and a pregame rain delay, especially in this period of deflation since Josh Naylor was bundled off to the Mariners. There are 224 comments at time of writing, with the Comment of the Game going to AZNailgal520 for this much-shared sentiment that narrowly edged out a bunch of similar ones in terms of rec’s:
Well said, on both counts. Godspeed, Randal, and may your bat be enough to help the Royals improve their outfield offense and climb their way into an AL Wild Card spot.
Anyway, join us tomorrow for the rubber match and the conclusion of our season series against the Pirates. If’s a relatively early one, being on the east coast and all, and it’s going to be a very tough matchup involving two aces at least one ace. Zac Gallen starts for us, Paul Skenes goes for them, first pitch is scheduled for 10:35am Arizona time. Hope to see you.
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!