Finally we got to see our team dollars at work….
I don’t know about you all, but I was honestly kind of dreading this afternoon’s game—having to watch it all the way through, ride the deeply unpleasant roller coaster through the ups and downs and ups and downs, and then have to write it up afterwards, however it turned out. I mean, let’s face it….thus far, Corbin Burnes hadn’t been all he was cracked up to be. First there was all that business about him pitching fifth in the rotation for the first start, and then the crap results, and then the further crap results, and then after finally we started to see better results there was the “um, his shoulder is tired and he needs to skip a start, but really IT’S ALL TOTALLY FINE!” That sort of thing, I find, starts to wear on me, especially given our track record with signing highly priced free agent starters to be our slightly aged “aces”. I mean, Zack Grienke wound up being really good for us, but he was never in any danger of winning a third Cy Young award as the leader of the Diamondbacks rotation. And as for the Rodeo Clown, well. He has been devoured by the voracious musk oxen of Greenland and shat out and reprocessed as compost if there’s any justice, so no more need be said of him. But I imagine you see my point.
So anyway. I think I’m no longer worried about Corbin Burnes. He looked like the real deal tonight. I feel confident in stating that the Ace has landed.
Why do I feel that confidence? Well. Despite giving up a leadoff single to Shohei Ohtani to start the game, he still faced the minimum through the first two innings, and only needed 20 pitches to do so. He had a bit of traffic to deal with in the third and the fourth, but pitched his way out of it with no real trouble or drama. There was a leadoff single to start the fifth, but he put up another zero anyway, and only needed to throw five pitches total in that inning overall. He pitched around a two-out single in the sixth, and set down the bottom of the Doyers lineup in order to finish the seventh.
That’s ace stuff right there. He only struck out five, sure, and he didn’t kill any stray birds with any pitches, but he only needed 91 pitches to record 21 outs. And this is against a team that, while their pitching may well be overpriced trash, has a lineup that is pretty terrifying and put up 14 runs against us last night.
Finally, watching this game and watching Burnes do his work, I was like, “Oh. Okay. I get it.”
Meanwhile, it’s a good thing that Burnes was so very, very good, because our offense seemed to have some difficulty with LA starter Dustin May, who hasn’t put up particularly good numbers so far this year but who seemed to have our number early. Despite two two-out singles in the bottom of the first off the bats of Pavin Smith and Josh Naylor, May still managed to put up a zero with only nine (!) pitches thrown. Tim Tawa singled with two outs in the bottom of the second, but May managed another zero nevertheless.
We didn’t get to him until the third, as Corbin Carroll (the other Corbin, tonight) led off the inning with a triple to center that carried over the head of Doyers’ center fielder (today, anyway) Hyeseong Kim, and scored on a Ketel Marte groundout to second.
Nothing else happened, but it gave us a lead that, thanks to Corbin Burnes, we would never relinquish. 1-0 D-BACKS
Gabriel Moreno managed a one-out single in the bottom of the fourth, and we sat down in order in the bottom of the fifth, but it wasn’t until the sixth, with May still being way more effective than it seemed like he should have been, that we managed to leave another mark. Pavin Smith led off with a bloop single that dropped just fair down the left field line, but was promptly erased by Josh Naylor doing one of his most annoying Josh Naylor things, which is grounding into double plays. That brought Eugenio Suarez to the plate with two outs and nobody on. Folks in the Gameday Thread had been remarking about how May was grooving too many pitches in the middle of the plate and surely, surely, that was going to bite him eventually, though it certainly hadn’t so far. But, you know, we know, it’s Geno. When he’s not flailing at pitches out of the zone while trying to hit a seventeen-run homer, he is perfectly capable of doing something like this, launching one over the wall just left of straightaway center:
Once again, that was it, but it tacked on another run. 2-0 D-BACKS
May wound up getting pulled for Alex Vesia with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, so aside from the runs and the not getting the final out of the frame, he went almost as long as Burnes did. Which was mildly annoying….I’d prefer to see the Doyers bullpen a bit more crisped up going into tomorrow than it looks like they’re gonna be. But it is what it is.
But now that brings us to the eighth, and the second burning question that was in my mind, and I’m sure the minds of many of the Diamondbacks’ faithful, especially after last night’s debacle. Burnes was great, he was legitimately ace-like, and he got through seven innings with nary a blip. But who was going to get us the rest of the way to the finish line?
Why, Ryne Nelson, of course! Not only did he hit pretty effectively when he was playing his college ball, he was also a closer. So he came out and pitched the top of the eighth, mowing down Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman on 11 pitches total. Then he mowed down the next three batters in the top of the ninth, and done and done.
Except that we also tacked on a third insurance run in the bottom of the eighth, thanks to successive leadoff doubles by Ketel Marte and Pavin Smith, which accounts for the full margin of victory. 3-0 D-BACKS
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
The Ace: Corbin Burnes (7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 5 K, 2 BB, +44.1% WPA)
The King: Ryne Nelson (2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 K, +11.0% WPA)
We had a lovely and well-attended Gameday Thread today, with 352 wide-ranging comments at time of writing. They included plenty of cogent and insightful remarks about the game, as well as some inevitable encouragement (and discouragement) of post-traumatic day drinking, as well as a surprisingly extensive reimagining of D-Day code words that revolved, for whatever reason, around bagels. Maybe it was all the zeroes that Burnes put up. Anyway. I am happy to award today’s Comment of the Game to Sneeeks for this late observation about what an absolute boss the Ryno has been this entire season:
Amen to that. Much respect, and thank you, Ryne, for locking this one down.
So now we’ve got our series split, and it’s time to get ready for tomorrow, when we look to garner a series win against these FTD chuckleheads. Zac Gallen, who has been pretty good his last two starts, takes the mound for us, facing off against Doyers righthander and recent Tommy John returnee (he’ll be making only his third start since August of 2023) Tony Gonsolin. I hope you can join us as we look to remind FTD that, even though they are the best team money can buy, this is our goddamn house. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time. Hope to see you in the Gameday Thread!
As always, thanks for reading. It’s nice to recap a Saturday win, and such an emphatic one at that. And as always, go Diamondbacks!