So slip away the early leads of the D-Backs.
Well, after a couple of joyous weekends of actually getting to recap some Diamondbacks wins, we appear to have returned to our regular Saturday programming, which is to say the Sneks finding a way to lose another winnable game, and for our pitching to let another lead slip away.
I don’t want to spend too much time or too many words on the blow-by-blow here, because we’ve all seen this movie before and the gory details get increasingly uninteresting to me as we go through yet another iteration of this. Familiarity breeds contempt, or something.
What Happened
Brandon Pfaadt needed 34 pitches to get though the top of the first, and let the first five batters reach base in a variety of ways, with a fair amount of help from sloppy defense: Pavin Smith had a ball hit directly at him at first that he totally missed and went into right field, scored a single but it should have been an error. Geraldo Perdomo booted a grounder up the middle that would have been an early double play ball. The bases wound up being loaded with two runs already in when Pfaadt righted himself and struck out the last three batters he faced. 2-0 Miami
We got a run back in the bottom of the frame thanks to a Perdomo leadoff single and an eventual Eugenio Suarez RBI double. 2-1 Miami
Pfaadt gave the run back in the top of the third on two two-out hits. 3-1 Miami
We finally got to Tommy John recoveree and former Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara with three straight one-out hits from the bottom of the order, and then three more after Alek Thomas commenced shopping for sombreros with his first of three Ks. The big one was Ketel Marte’s three-run dinger that just snuck over the bullpen fence in left:
That brought Ketel to 500 RBIs in a Diamondbacks uniform, and solidified a nice, crooked number. 6-3 D-BACKS
Ketel got his 501st RBI with a sacrifice fly in the fifth to drive in backup catcher James McCann to extend the lead. 7-3 D-BACKS
Sadly, though, the bullpen then got involved. Kyle Backhus and Kevin Ginkel pitched a scoreless inning apiece, which was great, but Jalen Beeks melted down in the eighth, and was replaced by Ryan Thompson, but not before three fish had flopped across the plate. 7-6 D-BACKS
Shelby Miller blew the save in the ninth thanks to a couple of stolen bases and a sac fly. 7-7 TIE
Juan Morillo allowed the Manfred Man to score in the top of the tenth, and the Diamondbacks failed to get their own ghost runner home in the bottom. 8-7 Miami
Some Things Worth Mentioning (Maybe)
- The way this thing started, it really seemed like Brandon Pfaadt would be the villain of the piece, but he dusted himself off after throwing all those first inning pitches, and aside from the little hiccup in the third, he looked like his old self. There were the two innings where he allowed runs to score, but the other three he worked were 1-2-3 innings, with only 31 pitches thrown in total in those frames. He finished up with a perfectly respectable pitching line of 5 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 1 BB and 7 K with 86 pitches thrown.
- It may be the case that the early Saturday start today, which was necessitated by a charity firefighters-vs.-cops softball game that was going to be played on the field after the baseball, contributed somewhat to our demise. Bob Brenly noted in the broadcast that on day games following night games, our position players don’t do infield drills or take batting practice on the field. And sure enough, in that top of the first it looked like our infielders were still getting their pregame practice reps in, and that cost Pfaadt a lot in terms of pitches, though Brandon did an admirable job, really, in limiting the damage. So maybe, just maybe, Torey should make them go out there and take some infield warmup and things, regardless of whether it means the players would need to get up earlier.
- Our bullpen is now responsible for 15 of our 41 losses on the season so far. or 361⁄2% of them. Consider this: if our bullpen had managed to hold even half of those, we would be sitting at 48-34, good for the first spot in the NL Wild Card. We have been decimated by injuries, and we definitely have some holes in the lineup right now, but really, at the end of the day, the bullpen is the problem.
- To come at it from a slightly different vector, after today we have had 40 save opportunities in 82 games. We have converted 25 of those opportunities, or 621⁄2%. To be fair, there are twelve other teams that are worse than us at converting saves—ranging from luminaries like the White Sox, Rockies, Pirates, Marlins, Athletics, to actually successful teams like the Phillies and the Mets. But given how today’s result puts us squarely back atop Mount .500, even with our failure to preserve leads in close games, failure to convert one of every three save opportunities has cost us. A lot. If we had managed to not blow the save in half of those games, rounding down, our record would be 48-34 instead of 41-41, and we’d be in the lead for the top wild card spot. So. Again. The bullpen is the problem.
- They’re also gonna be especially crispy tomorrow, thanks to the fact that, over the five innings the bullpen was involved, we used no less than six pitchers. So Anthony DeSclafani and new callup John Curtiss will be our only rested bullpen arms tomorrow. Good times.
- Today’s home plate umpire, Chris Segal, was truly capricious and awful at calling balls and strikes. I expect the Umpire Scorecard for this clown is going to be….well, remarkable.
Anyway, enough of my nattering. On to the back matter….
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
Heroes: Ketel Marte (4 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 4 RBI, +21.1% WPA), James McCann (3 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 2 RBI, +12.0% WPA)
Villains: Jalen Beeks (1⁄3 IP, 3 ER, 1 H, 1 HR, 1K, -12.4% WPA), Shelby Miller (1 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 2 K, -19.4% WPA), Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. (4 AB, 0 H, 1 HBP, 1 CS, -20.8% WPA)
It was kind of a sparse Gameday Thread for most of the game, but it wound up being quite respectable, especially give the unusual early Saturday start time, with 220 comments at time of writing. Comment of the Game goes, by popular acclaim, to The-Icon for this undeniable and frequently lamentable truth:
It’s what we sign up for, I guess, being Diamondbacks fans. Heigh ho.
Anyway. Stop by tomorrow if you care to see whether we can avoid getting swept by fishes with brooms. I mean, fishes don’t have arms or legs, and they are aquatic creatures, so you gotta believe that they would have difficulty successfully manipulating a broom, but, well, you never know. First pitch is once more at 1:10pm AZ time, with Eduardo Rodriguez going for us and Cal Quantrill goes for the Marlins in a lefty face-off. Hope you can join us.
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks.