At least we got to meet Christian Montes de Oca!
So, less than an hour after the deflating completion of last night’s game, I’m sad to report that we picked up pretty much right where we left off, but with much worse pitching.
To be fair, we retired the Reds in order in four of the eight innings we faced their offense, and put up zeroes in two of the others as well. If one could just stitch those together, this would have looked like a pretty good outing. The problem was those other two innings, specifically the first and the fourth. Those two were doozies.
Ryne Nelson walked three in the first, gave up a home run and a double and a single, and threw 39 pitches while surrendering five in the bottom of the first. This was, needless to say, sub-optimal. 5-0 Cincinnati
Eugenio Suarez led off the top of the second with a homer to left, which was nice, and got us maybe thinking that we could climb out of the early hole and make a game of it. 5-1 Cincinnati
Um, no. Not a chance. Nelson pitched two fantastic innings in the second and the third, sitting down the top six in the Reds’ lineup in order, but then started the fourth with another walk and a weak single to shallow center. He was at 77 pitches at this point, so for good or ill Torey Lovullo pulled him and brought in Kendall Graveman. And, well, welp.
Graveman gave up a run-scoring single, then hit a batter, to load the bases with one run already in, and served up a meatball to Gavin Lux, who deposited the ball in the right field bleachers for a grand slam. Three more hits ensued after that, along with two walks, before Graveman finally put the inning to rest and with the game now pretty firmly out of reach. 13-1 Cincinnati
Small blessings. though….the game went pretty quickly after that, as it was zeroes on the scoreboard for both teams the rest of the way.
So What Did the Offense Do?
Well, sad to say, they did just about nothing. Aside from the Suarez dinger in the second that saved us from a shutout, we had nine other batters reach base over the nine innings. Singles by Pavin Smith, Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., Alek Thomas, Geno, Ketel Marte and Josh Naylor were scattered here and there, along with walks to Smith, Tim Tawa, and Jose Herrera, but none of them in sufficient clumps for us to get another other runs across the plate.
Did Anything Good Happen? At All?
Sure.
- We held the Reds scoreless in six of eight innings, as noted above.
- Also, Jose Herrera pitched the bottom of the eighth, rocking a full arsenal ranging from a 43.7 mph four-seam fastball to a 37.4 mph slider and a 33.1 mph changeup* to put up a zero despite pitching around two singles. So that was hilarious.
* According to the MLB Gameday app, all of his pitches were sliders, but if you were watching closely, and you have a discerning eye like I do, you could see the clear differences between them. Trust me.
- Finally, we saw the oft-anticipated debut of Christian Montes de Oca, and while it was certainly a low-leverage debut—he came on to start the bottom the fifth, after Graveman had happened—he was very impressive. He worked 22⁄3 innings, struck out two, flashed several very nasty pitches with high velocity and a lot of movement on them, and retired eight of the nine batters he faced, the only blemish being a one-out walk in the bottom of the seventh when he was clearly running out of gas. Truly a great job by the youngster, who looks to be a much-needed asset in our bullpen going forward.
Loss Probability, courtesy of FanGraphs
This is another game where the early blowout nature of it basically borks the entire WPA algorithm. For instance, Reds designated hitter Gavin Lux, despite his grand slam to really put the game out of the reach in the bottom of the fourth wound up with a -1.8% WPA for the game. I mean, really? Really? How?
Anyway. The only one that matters, because it’s the only one that mattered in the ballgame as it unraveled, was of course Ryne Nelson, who wound up with the unfortunate pitching line of 3 IP, 4 H, 7 ER, 1 HR, 4 BB and 3 K on 77 pitches thrown, which earns him to sole nickname designation today:
The Dog’s Breakfast: Ryne Nelson (see above, -31.7% WPA)
The Gameday Thread this afternoon was, well, sparse. That’s completely understandable, given the early and disappointing start to the day with the completion of last night’s contest, followed by Nelson putting us in a five-run hole before the first inning was even over. We have a total of 126 comments as of now, and while a fair number of them went Sedona Red, the majority of those were either a) mine; or b) about food, or other things not particularly related to the game. So partly because of that, but also because it’s an observation that I wholeheartedly agreed with, CotG goes to Snake_Bitten:
I don’t recall particularly enjoying Josh Collmenter’s presence in the booth in recent years, but he’s a lot better now. I quite like him, actually.
Anyhow. It wouldn’t be Saturday, it seems, if I didn’t try to entice you to join us tomorrow as we try to avoid the sweep in yet another weekend series this season. Gallen’s on the mound for us, Brady Singer is on the mound for the Reds. I dunno. First pitch is scheduled for an unappealingly early 10:40am AZ time. Mimosa baseball brunch, anyone? Hope you can drop by, in any case.
As always, thanks for reading. As always, go Diamondbacks!