The D-Backs have struggled on weekends this year, but this night turned into the rarest of rare events: stress-free victory!
Game Summary
It was an inauspicious start to the night for Ryne Nelson, and I thought it was going to be another one of those Friday nights like Dano touched on in his post last weekend. Nelson’s first pitch of the night was rifled to the visitor’s bullpen for a leadoff double, then a few pitches later a sacrifice fly and a throwing error by Alek Thomas had the Padres up 1-0 after 2 batters. It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Nelson after that, but that 2 hitter stretch did end up being the low-point of the night for the D-Backs starter. Ryne gave up 6 Walks+Hits in the first 3 innings on some loud contact (but crucially just the one run). In his last 2 innings of work, Nelly only allowed a single hit and zero walks. Nelson only had 79 pitches after 5 innings, but was presumably pulled in the name of protecting his arm considering his wildly varying workload over the first few months of this season.
At that point in the game when the Snakes bullpen came in, they had a 5-1 lead to protect thanks to some long balls by Naylor and Corbin as well as excellent sequencing when the Diamondbacks strung multiple hits together in the 3rd and the 5th innings, the latter barrage pushing the Padres’ hot starter, Stephen Kolek, out of the game before the end of the fifth inning.
The Padres’ bullpen proved a tough nut to crack for our offense, but fortunately, on this night, the Diamondbacks bullpen was equally up to the challenge. Kyle Backhus allowed a lead off walk as the first man out of the ‘pen, but then the D-Back relievers didn’t allow another runner for the rest of the game, a total of 4 innings of nearly perfect baseball. Thanks to the combination of early offense and stellar relief pitching, the Diamondbacks not only broke out of their Friday night funk, they did it without causing any cardiac events for the fan base!
Win Probability and Box Score
Outside the Box Score
- First pitch of the game was ripped to right by Fernando Tatis, Jr., and Corbin Carroll did a great job to cut it off before either got into the corner and held him to a double instead of a triple. It didn’t matter, though, because Arraez was next man up and flied out to center. Tatis tagged up and tried to advance to third, and Alek short hopped the throw to Geno which glanced off his glove and ran down the wall along the third base line. Ryne Nelson wasn’t in the proper spot to back up the throw, misplayed the carom off the wall, and allowed Tatis to score from second on a flyout to medium depth centerfield.
- With one out and runners on the corners in the top of the second, Gabi had a chance for a strike-em-out, throw-em-out, but short hopped the throw down to second and the ball skipped into centerfield, appearing to allow the runner from third to score. Then, a lucky break! The home plate umpire waved off the play as Gabi hit the umpire’s mask on his windup to throw and the Padres runners had to return to first and third. The next batter flew out to end the inning and the D-Backs escaped with only the 1-run deficit.
- After some defensive miscues early on, Ketel Marte started a slick 4-6-3 double play on a hard one-hopper to his glove side. It looked like it kinda came in on him and ate him up, but he kept he was able to control it and smoothly erase a lead off walk by Tatis. This would loom larger after Machado and Merrill followed that ground out with back-to-back singles that would have scored a run or two if Ketel doesn’t make that play.
- Corbin struck out with 2 outs in the third, but the catcher couldn’t keep the pitch in front of him and Carroll was able to reach on what should have been the third out. This would prove to be very significant as Ketel followed with a walk and Perdomo got a seeing-eye single up the middle to plate Corbin and give the Snakes a 1-run lead.
- Ryne Nelson was doing a great job of staying out of long at bats and keeping his pitch count low, despite giving up several hits through the first few frames. In the fifth inning, with the tying run in scoring position and two outs, Nelson fell behind in the count to Machado 3-1, but Nelly battled back and made Machado foul off 3 straight pitches before getting him to pop out weakly to left and end the inning.
- The Diamondbacks were able to get into the Padres bullpen with one out in the fifth inning thanks to a string of hits to lead off the fifth. Corbin led off with a homer into the first row in left field (great job by the fan to catch it before the Padres’ left fielder had a chance to rob Corbin of a dinger). Then Ketel singled, Domo doubled, and Naylor hit a hard sac fly to center to score Ketel. Geno then got hit on the forearm for a free pass to first before Lourdes Gurriel singled to bring Domo home and chase Kolek. The bullpen stopped the bleeding in the fifth, but it’s always good to get into the opposing team bullpen early in the first game of the series.
- Ryne Nelson was pulled early, only throwing 79 pitches in 5 innings, and Kyle Backhus was called on to face a couple lefties leading off the sixth. A leadoff walk was fairly concerning, but it all concerns were put to rest as Backus induced a weak chopper to Domo for a double play and a pop out to Ketel to finish off 3 outs in 3 batters faced.
- Lourdes Gurriel made an outrageous catch in top of the 8th inning. He was playing very shallow against Luis Arraez and he ended up popping it down the line and right in front of the bullpen. Gurriel was in full sprint going back and made an excellent catch reaching fully out mid-stride with his back to the infield.
Player of the Game
Ryne Nelson was only able to go 5 innings tonight, but after his first rough start of this season last Saturday, it was great to see him have such a nice bounce back outing. He was able to lock in after mental error backing up the errant throw from Alek Thomas in the first and he didn’t get rattled with traffic on the bases through the early portion of the game.
Nelson is technically filling the void in the rotation left by Corbin Burnes’ injury. Replacing Burnes can’t fall on any single pitcher on the staff, it’s going to take every single one of our starters to step up and play up to their abilities if the Snakes are going to be Alive in the 2025 playoffs. Tonight was exactly what we needed to see from Ryne in that context.
Also, the bullpen deserves a shoutout for their impeccable work in the back half of this game, facing the minimum across 4 innings. Excellent work from the mound overall this evening.
Comment of the Game
Lighter participation in tonight’s GDT (a trend I’ve noticed in the Apple games), with a total of 215 comments at time of publishing. Not a ton of Sedona red to choose from, but this one from Dano_in_Tucson was an appropriate summation of the Snakes great start to the fifth inning which chased the Padres’ starter from the game:
Coming Up
The Diamondbacks face the Friars in the second game of this NL West face-off tomorrow at 4:15pm Arizona time. The game will be nationally televised on FOX which is the reason for the nonstandard start time. Zac Gallen gets the ball for the good guys tomorrow and he’ll be opposed by right-hander Ryan Bergert who is 1-0 and has a 1.26 ERA. Will we be able to push the winning streak to 5? Will we fully reverse our weekend curse?!