Someone’s looking awfully ace-like just now….
So going into today’s game I was bracing myself for what has been seeming like the increasingly inevitable Great Diamondbacks Rental Sell-Off of 2025, thinking about how much of a bummer it would be to watch out the rest of the year with Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suarez playing baseball in other teams’ uniforms. After our dismal finish to the San Francisco series and the even more dismal performance of Eduardo Rodriguez and company last night, it’s been getting harder and harder to deny that it’s a real possibility in the coming weeks.
Happily, however, we seem to have pushed back a little bit against that outcome, and while the offense did its job admirably in providing run support, there’s really only one person we can thank for today’s respite, and that is of course Ryne Nelson. He’s been fantastic just about every time out since he’s settled back into the starting rotation, and today’s performance was his best yet.
How good was he? Well, he retired the first sixteen batters he faced, in order, and had a perfect game rolling along through five and a third innings. In fact, he only needed 55 pitches to retire those sixteen batters. He leaned on his fastball once again, and the fastball hit 99 on a couple of occasions, and he was still hitting 97 on the radar gun while he was wrapping up his seventh inning of work. He only struck out five, but he didn’t walk a batter, and while he lost the perfect game, and the shutout, thanks to three singles in the top of the sixth, he still finished up seven innings with a pitching line of 7 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 5 K, 0 BB on 86 pitches thrown. Not too shabby at all.
And yes, in case you were wondering, I’ve been sitting on that recap title and Jimmy Buffett reference for a very long time now, waiting for an appropriate occasion. I think this one fits.
So What Did the Offense Do?
Not much for the first two innings. The top of the order was stymied by Royals starter Michael Wacha in the first, and failed to get a run across in the second despite loading the bases on singles by Suarez and James McCann (today’s catcher) and an Alek Thomas walk.
We broke it open a bit in the bottom of the third, thanks to Geraldo Perdomo getting hit by a pitch up and in, Pavin Smith drawing a walk, and then successive RBI singles by Naylor and Suarez. 2-0 D-BACKS
Somewhat weirdly, Wacha bounced back in the bottom of the fourth to strike out the side, but resumed his rather sloppy outing by walking Perdomo and Smith (again) to start the inning. That actually ended his day, and brought in righty John Schreiber, who quickly disposed of Naylor and Suarez. That set the stage for Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., who grounded the first pitch he saw over the third base bag, down the line, and into the corner for a bases-clearing double:
So that was fun! Yay Lourdes! 4-0 D-BACKS
As noted above, Ryne Nelson gave them back a run in the top of the sixth to narrow our lead, but that was okay, not only because two runs would have been sufficient for the win, but because we had a bit more piling on to do. Old friend Taylor Clarke came out of the Kansas City bullpen for the bottom of the seventh, and retired Naylor and Suarez again. Lourdes had some more extra bases in him, though, and shot a liner the other way past a diving Jac Caglianone for a triple, and was driven in by McCann’s second hit of the day, this one a double to center. 5-1 D-BACKS
But wait, there was more! Yet another guy came out the Royals’ ‘pen for the eighth, promptly hit Blaze Alexander (today’s second baseman, with Ketel Marte on a scheduled day off) with a pitch, advancing him to third with a wild and ill-advised pickoff attempt, and then surrendering the Diamondbacks’ sole dinger of the day to Randal Grichuk, who’d pinch hit for Pavin Smith in the sixth. Grichuk’s home run was noteworthy in that at first it appeared that it hit off the top of the wall and took a wildly improbable bounce that rolled out into the middle of the outfield, and was scored an inside-the-park home run:
Upon seeing the replay, it was clear that the ball bounded as far away as it did because it had in fact gone over the fence and rebounded off a chair in the pool area. I found that a bit sad, because inside-the-parkers are always more fun, at least when we get them. But still, runs are runs. 7-1 D-BACKS
Kevin Ginkel, meanwhile, pitched around a one-out double for a scoreless eighth (good job, Gink!) and Shelby Miller pitched a perfect ninth to end things on a happy note!
Fun with Numbers, Large and Small
- Number of pitches thrown by Ryne Nelson, by inning: 9, 9, 12, 15, 9, 21, 11. Efficiency, thy name is Nelson.
- Number of pitches seen by Geraldo Perdomo over his five plate appearances: 35. Between all the different pitchers the Royals used today, Diamondbacks hitters saw 168 pitches by my count. Gerry, by himself, saw more than 20% of them. I love Gerry.
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
Ace of the Day: Ryne Nelson (pitching line above, +31.3% WPA)
And that’s pretty much your lot, because nobody else who appeared for the Diamondbacks rated higher than Geno’s 7.6%, which was presumably due to him driving in what was essentially the winning run in the third. The algorithm has no use for your insurance runs.
It was a broadly pleasant and busy Gameday Thread today, with 274 comments at time of writing despite another weirdly early Saturday start time. Precious few comments actually went Sedona Red, though, and most of the ones that did were not really game-relevant. The top vote-getter certainly was, so I’m happy to award this afternoon’s Comment of the Game to our Fearless Leader for this appreciation of the man of the hour:
Bravo indeed. Nelson pitched a helluva game.
Anyway. Rubber match tomorrow, but it may be sort of an odd one for us, because apparently Torey Lovullo has decided that he wants all his starters to pitch on an extra day’s rest as we complete the final march to the All Star Break. Thus, Anthony “Disco” DeSclafani will be getting the start for us, and going up against Michael Lorenzen for Kansas City. First pitch is scheduled once again for 1:10pm AZ time, and if it’s anything like today, it will be a fun time for Sneks fans. Hope you can join us.
As always, thanks so much for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!