That headline is in many respects a big, fat lie.
Well, so. This is weird. For the first time in awhile on a Saturday night, I find myself somewhat unexpectedly in the position of having a Diamondbacks win to recap. Which is cool, and I am enormously happy both with the win snatched from the jaws of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, and with the opportunity to write it up, but it’s also, well, somewhat disorienting. After all, it’s been awhile.
So we had Zac Gallen taking the mound this afternoon, and I’m sure we’re all pretty familiar at this point with how Gallen has been pitching in 2025, and really since 2024. Which is to say, not well. He came into today rocking an ERA over 5, and he was facing a young reliever-come-starter named Ryan Bergert who the Padres recently converted and who was coming into the third start of his young career with an ERA under 2 in 101⁄3 innings pitched. As Makakilo noted in their series preview, this was the game in the series with the clearest advantage to the Padres, but also that with the small sample size as a starter, hitters should soon start figuring him out.
We certainly did not do so for the first three innings, which was basically a pitchers’ duel between the two clubs. Gallen allowed some contact from the get-go but was also the beneficiary of two double plays turned behind him in the first two innings. The only real blemish was a two-out homer Zac surrendered to San Diego left fielder Gavin Sheets with two outs in the top of the second. It was a pretty good pitch, up and in at the top of the zone and maybe even inside a little bit, but somehow Sheets turned on it and sent it into the seats in right. 1-0 San Diego
Meanwhile, Bergert was shutting us right down in his first trip through the order, striking out six of the first ten Diamondbacks he faced and only allowing a Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. bloop single to shallow center with two outs in the second.
Lo and behold, however, as Mak predicted, we figured Bergert out some in the bottom of the fourth. Ketel Marte, who had a pretty crap day overall at the plate, grounded out on the first pitch he saw, but then Geraldo Perdomo drew a six-pitch walk to get a little something going. Josh Naylor singled the first pitch he saw into right to advance Gerry to second. That brought Eugenio Suarez to the plate, and well, Corbin Carroll had surged into the team HR lead in last night’s victory, so you might have figured that Geno would have something to say about that. And yes, he did, leaning out on the fifth pitch of his at bat and crushing a slider deep into the left-field seats:
That was all we got out of the inning, despite a subsequent walk and hilarious stolen base by Gurriel, but honestly, the way Gallen was dealing, it seemed like that might be enough.
3-1 D-BACKS
And Gallen was dealing. He had sat down San Diego in order in the third and fourth, and while he seemed to lose the strike zone for a bit in the bottom of the fifth and walked two consecutive batters at the bottom of the Padres’ order, he collected himself and put up a zero anyway. Similarly, he pitched around a one-out single and a subsequent walk in the sixth, but had still only allowed the one run by the end of the sixth, and was sitting at 80 pitches thrown. He was starting to look shaky there in those last couple of innings, but still, 80 pitches isn’t that much.
There was some speculation in the Gameday Thread as to whether Torey Lovullo would send him out for the seventh, and while some of us had misgivings, it was unsurprising that when the top of the seventh rolled around, out came Zac. Also unsurprising, to those of us who have seen this movie before, was how quickly the wheels came off in that frame.
Gavin Sheets led off the inning with a double. One might have thought that Torey would pull Gallen then.
But no.
When Jake Cronenworth sent the first pitch he saw from Gallen in the next AB to left for a single, putting runners on first and second and bringing the go-ahead run to the plate, you might have thought Torey would pull him then.
But no.
I mean, okay, granted, he was facing Padres DH Luis Campusino, who hasn’t recorded a hit yet in 2025, and okay, Zac managed to strike him out after running the count full. So, one down. You might have thought Torey would pull him then.
But no.
He left Zac out there, who was now at 91 pitches, to face a pinch hitter that the Padres brought in and who he promptly walked on five pitches to load the bases.
Finally, FINALLY, Zac was pulled, with the bases loaded and only one out, and replaced with, um, Ryan Thompson. And yeah. That went about as well as most of us expected….a single, a foul-out, a double, and a walk later, the top of the seventh was finally over, but only thanks to Gabriel Moreno throwing out Jackson Merrill as he tried to steal second. 5-3 San Diego
Now, as you probably are aware if you’ve been reading my recaps and interacting with me in the GDTs and stuff, I have no interest in climbing onto the torches-and-pitchforks “Fire Torey!” blame-the-manager bandwagon, but this really had me shaking my head. Gallen was approaching the point of running on fumes, so why even send him out, given how badly that’s worked most of the time we’ve asked him to come out for the seventh?
Seriously, Torey, why?
And why, when he’s clearly not pitching effectively anymore, do you leave him in to load the bases?
And then, for the love of all that is holy and sacred, why do you bring in Ryan Thompson to try and bail the team out of the mess that you let Gallen get us into?
Why?
WHY?
[Note: That rant would have likely been the centerpiece of my recap, actually, had the game progressed along the same path it seemed to have gotten onto. Happily, however, it did not. So read on. But I do stand by that rant, regardless of the ultimate result.]
So, yeah. Things didn’t really get any better after that, in terms of the bullpen. Jalen Beeks pitched aorund a one-out single to put up a zero in the eighth, which was nice, but Kevin Ginkel allowed two more in the top of the ninth, largely due to some bad luck and bad fielding behind him. 7-3 San Diego
Meanwhile, as the Fox national broadcasters were tirelessly reiterating, we were facing one of the best bullpens in baseball in the Padres, and sure enough, though we’d chased Bergert after five innings, Yuki Matsui, Jeremiah Estrada, and Jason Adam all came out and put up zeroes with varying degrees of efficiency to pave the way for Robert Suarez, their vaunted closer, to come out and snuff out our last hopes of a comeback.
Hee.
Here’s the thing. I don’t know if you recall, but on July 5 of last year (link to box score here, and our recap here), he came on in the ninth at Petco Park when we’d been down 7-2 entering the ninth and had put up a few runs to make it a save situation for the Friars. Despite him rocking a 1.74 ERA at that point, he gave up a two-run homer to Randal Grichuk and then, some batters later, a grand slam to Alek Thomas. We still wound up losing that game in the end, because our bullpen wound up being more useless than their bullpen, but that’s not the point. The point is that we’d gotten to Suarez before, and we’d put a walloping on him, so we could certainly do it again.
And so we did. Pavin Smith, who had three swinging Ks up to that point and seemed to be in the market for a golden sombrero, instead singled to shallow right to start things off. Moreno singled him to second, also into shallow right. Alek Thomas followed with a single up the middle to load the bases with nobody out. Corbin Carroll then struck out, which was disappointing, but Ketel Marte legged out an infield hit that was initially called an out by which was overturned on review. So one run in, bases still loaded, and only one out, Geraldo Perdomo coming to the plate. Perdomo got a meatball of a changeup in the middle of the plate, and turned on it to send it into the right field corner where it rattled around for awhile as he cruised into third with a bases-clearing, game-tying triple:
So that put the winning run at third with still only one out against the vaunted Suarez, with Josh Naylor coming to the plate. We were all hoping for a sacrifice fly or something, but instead Naylor did, um, this….
It wasn’t pretty, perhaps, but it got the job done, and the safe call at the plate was upheld on review. And that was your completely and utterly drama-free ballgame right there! 8-7 D-BACKS
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
The Biggest Damn Hero: Geraldo Perdomo (4 AB, 2 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 1 3B, 3 RBI, +71.3% WPA)
The Littler Heroes: Geno Suarez (3 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 1 BB, 1 K, 3 RBI, +22.7% WPA), Josh Naylor (5 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 K, 1 RBI, +11.6% WPA)
Not a Hero: Ryan Thompson (2⁄3 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 1 ER, -43.5% WPA)
Like the WPA chart above, it was quite the roller coaster of emotions in the Gameday Thread today, with 283 comments at time of writing. A number went Sedona Red, ranging from the joyous to the despondent to the disbelievingly exuberant, and of course also several eminently valid complaints against the pretty crappy announcers on the Fox broadcast. By popular demand, and also because it captures the end result of the game as well as resonating with me personally, I give today’s Comment of the Game to our fearless leader:
Indeed. Indeed. I’m very glad this one turned out the way it did, and that we have maybe started to break the “sucking on weekends” curse we’ve been laboring under. Huzzah!
Anyway! Tomorrow we’re going to try to push our winning streak to a season-record six games, with Merrill Kelly taking the mound for us, Jake Pivetta going for them, and TheRealRamona guest recapping our sweep attempt from the comfort of the same living room that we were sitting in today as this one unfolded. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time, and we will be back with our usual Diamondbacks broadcasts for the first time this weekend, if that appeals to you. It certainly does to me….I’m kind of over the national broadcasters for awhile. I hope you can join us!
As always, thanks for reading, and I’m very glad for us all that I was able to recap a win for you lovely folks tonight. And as always, go Diamondbacks!