Maybe the Diamondbacks are finally shaking off the Trade Deadline funk?
So late this afternoon Ramona and I met up at a nearby watering hole with a number of my work friends who have been deeply involved with the unionization effort at our school. We were celebrating the end of negotiations with management on our first collectively bargained contract. The contract vote is scheduled for Tuesday, and if and when it’s ratified, we will be the first charter school in Arizona to have successfully gotten an enforceable, negotiated union contract. If you’re in Arizona and you keep an eye on the local news, you might actually see some reporting about it on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Many of my friends and colleagues were still there when Ramona and I had to leave, and part of me would have liked to stick around, but I knew I had to come home to recap another Zac Gallen start and my first recap since we all waved goodbye to Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor, Merrill Kelly, et al.
Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to this. I remain quite sad at the departure of players that I’d really grown attached to during their tenures with the Sneks, however long those tenures had been. I was also deeply disappointed (and still am, really, if I’m honest) that we didn’t get to wave goodbye to Gallen as well. I’ve been very harsh with him this year, and rightly so, I believe, and I would not have been sorry to see him go.
And you know what? It turns out that the Diamondbacks team that showed up to play this evening was very different than the one we’ve seen for the last couple of weeks, and really since the All-Star Break, and in some ways since even before the Break. They went out there and they played hard, the defense was beyond solid, our hitters were taking good patient at bats and they were actually hitting, and the pitching, from Gallen on down, was more than adequate. They also seemed to me to be more at ease, like a weight had been lifted from their collective shoulders, and they even seemed to be having fun at times. I imagine all of those things are connected.
Of course, we were also playing in a minor-league ballpark against a team that is by most metrics really bad, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? Every journey, single step, etc.
So Ketel Marte, sporting a fairly drastic new haircut, got us on the board two batters into the ballgame, as he launched the second pitch he saw onto the grassy berm that would be the right field seats in an actual ballpark:
Nothing else of note happened in the top of the first, but it gave us our first lead of the ballgame. 1-0 D-BACKS
Gallen allowed that lead to stand for the first two innings of his start, though sadly the Diamondbacks weren’t able to add to it at all against A’s rookie righthander J.T. Ginn. Zac didn’t look terribly sharp or ace-like (in case you, like me, had a faint hope that, now that Kelly was gone, he would maybe rediscover some of his former qualities), but he pitched around minimal traffic and put up zeroes and didn’t make any particularly drastic mistakes with his pitch locations.
That changed in the bottom of the third, when, after a one-out Nick Kurtz single sandwiched between two very efficient outs, he left meatballs in the middle of the strike zone to Shea Langeliers and Tyler Soderstrom. Back-to-back doubles ensued, and the lead was gone. 2-1 West Sacramento
Sadly, we did not answerback in the top of the fourth, as Adrian Del Castillo, Heather Tyler Locklear, and James McCann each made an easy out after three pitches apiece. Those three, in fact, were a sinkhole of unproductive suck all night long, managing to produce an 0 for 13 between them, which is not exactly what you hope for from your five-, six-, and seven-hole hitters.
Gallen settled back down and put up another zero in the bottom of the frame, though, so that was a relief. Alek Thomas then singled to center to lead off the top of the fifth, which was only the second hit we’d managed in the ballgame to that point. Blaze Alexander, batting ninth and your new everyday third baseman, singled to right, allowing Alek to advance to third. Corbin Carroll then drew a walk, to load the bases with nobody out. It almost seemed like we were, what’s the phrase, “building an inning?” Except that, of late, we have abjectly failed to complete those buildings.
Not so today, however! Marte grounded sharply to second, but deep enough in the hole that the only play was throwing to first, as Thomas came across to score. J.T Ginn then walked Perdomo to load the bases again, which brought Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. to the plate. Gurriel was batting cleanup tonight, which I don’t imagine any of us were feeling all that great about, but lo and behold Lourdes delivered, putting up a very patient at bat where he took the first five pitches to run the count full before finally getting a pitch in the strike zone that he laced into left field for a single that drove in Carroll and Perdomo:
That chased Ginn from the game, and the first guy out of Oakland’s bullpen struck out both ADC and Locklear to shut things down. 4-2 D-BACKS
Alek Thomas added to the lead with a solo shot to right in the top of the sixth, and we scratched out another run in the top of the seventh on a Perdomo walk and stolen base, a groundout rhat advanced him to third, and a sac fly to right that brought him home. 6-2 D-BACKS
Gallen, meanwhile, pitched around more traffic in the fifth and the sixth but put up a couple more zeroes. He was only at 85 pitches at that point, so Torey Lovullo let him go out to start the bottom of the seventh, as millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, screaming the immortal words of Rocky the Flying Squirrel: “Again? That trick never works!” I mean, seriously. Gallen has been sent out for the seventh inning seven times this year, and in that inning alone he’s rocking a 13.50 ERA. Stop it, Torey. Get some help.
Anyway, thankfully Torey at least had Zac on a very short leash, and after Gallen gave up a leadoff single to the nine-hole hitter in the A’s lineup he was immediately replaced by Andrew Saalfrank, he of the 0.00 ERA through his first 71⁄3 innings. Saalfrank threw twelve pitches, recorded three outs, and improved that scoreless streak to 81⁄3 innings.
I know, right? What are the odds?
/cue cymbal clash
So Kendall Graveman pitched a perfectly clean bottom of the eighth, Corbin Carroll hit another souvenir ball onto the grassy knoll in right to lead off the top of the ninth, and Kevin Ginkel, despite surrendering a leadoff single to kick off the bottom of the ninth, retired the last three batters to end the game on a high note. 7-2 D-BACKS
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
Men at Work: Alek Thomas (3 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 1 HR, 1 RBI, 1 K, 1 BB, +15% WPA), Ketel Marte (4 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, +12.4% WPA)
Down Under: None worth mentioning or singling out, really. There were only three Diamondbacks who appeared in the game who garnered a negative number—ADC, Locklear, and McCann, but none of them broke the -10% mark. Everyone else was in the positive. This was a very different WPA chart than I’ve seen in most of the games that I recapped so far this season, and I think it might be a glimpse of the new normal as our boys figure out just who the hell they are after the departures. No ridiculous highs, no abysmal lows, everyone winning or losing together in a true team effort.
I dunno. A boy can dream.
It was another surprisingly lively and well-populated Gameday Thread tonight, with 291 comments at time of writing. A number went Sedona Red, but I’m giving this one to ChefAZ, by popular acclaim but also because the ensuing comment threads from the rest of the ‘Pit were pretty adorable and hilarious, on this one and on his later contributions:
There you go, Chef! From Fano, with love. I sincerely hope that tomorrow’s hangover isn’t too brutal.
Join us tomorrow if you would like to see us go for our first series win in awhile. Eduardo Rodriguez is taking the mound for us, which I understand may make this a harder sell. His opposite number will be a young gentleman named Jack Perkins, who is apparently making the eighth appearance of his young career and his first start, though apparently he has recorded saves in three of those previous games. I dunno if this is gonna be an opener-type thing for West Sacramento or what….it’s a mystery, and if you want to find out the solution to it, you’ll simply have to tune in for the scheduled first pitch at 1:05pm AZ time. Hope to see you!
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!