Diamondbacks 9, Dodgers 5: A Comedy of Errors

A very interesting game tonight, to put it mildly

Record: 26-22. Pace: 88-74. Change on 2024: +4.

Well, this was a fascinating contest. I was genuinely engrossed from first pitch to last, which is why this recap is later than usual. I did contemplate starting it when the D-backs took a 7-0 lead, but I ended up getting entranced by Brandon Pfaadt’s incredible dark magic for a bit. Then the bullpen took over, and Ryan Thompson made things more interesting than it should have been. But in the end, a four-run victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles is a perfectly fine result, bringing the D-backs to within three games of the division lead for the first time since April 25. With the Giants losing, It also puts us two games back of them for the final wild-card spot.

The Dodgers came into this on a three-game losing streak, and that was propelled largely by early deficits. They had allowed runs in four consecutive first innings, and a spectacular outfield gaffe extended that streak to five. With two on and one out, Eugenio Suarez hit a lazy fly ball to right-center. But the Dodgers’ CF lost the ball entirely, and it ended up dropping to the ground for an RBI double. Josh Naylor’s groundout, instead of being the third out, therefore ended up driving in another run, to give Arizona the gift of an early two-run lead. They added a third present in the second. Tim Tawa reached on an error, advanced on a wild pitch, and came home on a pair of fly out, making it 3-0.

Los Angeles were using an opener tonight, and after those two innings, turned to the original intended starter, Landon Knack, His first inning did not go well. He walked Corbin Carroll, and Lourdes Gurriel hit his eighth homer of the year, to roll out the Diamondbacks lead to 5-0. But, wait! There’s more! One out later, Josh Naylor singled, and Gabriel Moreno came through with his second long-ball (above) – both coming against the Dodgers, the last one being his grand-slam at Chase Field. 7-0 to Arizona, and this was a very amusing game indeed, especially after the trauma of Saturday night, and the nail-biting tension of defending a one-run lead for eight innings on Sunday.

Pfaadt, meanwhile, may be the luckiest man in baseball. He kinda earned that moniker after his last start againt the Dodgers, where laser-beam after laser-beam found the gloves of the D-backs. He did exactly the same thing again tonight. The Dodgers put five balls in play at 104 mph or faster off Pfaadt. One became a hit: a Shohei Ohtani home-run in the sixth inning. They made seven outs against Pfaadt, on balls in play where the expected batting average on them was .550 or higher. Most strikingly, he threw 95 pitches and did not get one single whiff. From what I could find on Baseball Savant, he may be the first pitcher to do that in the StatCast era.

He ended up allowing three home-runs – two to Mookie Betts in addition to the Ohtani one – but those were the only hits Pfaadt allowed. The Dodgers had a BABIP of literally .000 against him this evening. But the final line was a quality start: six innings pitched, with three runs on three hits, one walk and no strikeouts at all. What’s interesting is, it’s the third time Pfaadt has worked at least six innings without recording a strikeout: he did it twice last year. Meanwhile, every other starter for Arizona since the end of 2017, has managed that just once (Madison Bumgarner on July 29, 2022. Only one other Arizona starter since 2007 has done it and got the W, as Pfaadt did: Taijuan Walker in June 2017.

The offense for the Diamondbacks had kinda dried up. But there was one other bit of weirdness which deserves to be recorded. In the fifth inning, Gabriel Moreno had a 16-pitch at-bat (above) against Knack. While it ended in a fly-ball down the line in right, it was the longest at-bat in the majors this year, and also tied the franchise record for number of pitches. It had previously been done three time, most recently by Pavin Smith in 2021, but also by Arizona legends Rusty Ryal (2010) and Karim Garcia (1998). The last-named was the only to end the at-bat with a hit, getting a double. But I will say, after that rough start, Knack really saved the Dodgers’ pen. Curse him.

The Gameday Thread was growing increasingly nervous after the Dodgers went deep twice off Pfaadt in the sixth, which cut the lead to 7-3. There was a questionable statement how the team failing to bring Corbin Carroll after his lead-off triple in the fourth “really hurts”. [Narrator voice: it did not] And that was nothing compared to the rattling of pitchforks when Scott McGough entered for the eighth, after Juan Morillo had posted a zero in the seventh. The lead at that point was back to six, courtesy of our third two-run homer, this one off the bat of Geraldo Perdomo. It was his sixth, meaning he has now matched his career high for home-runs.

But McGough laughed in the face of the doubters, and retired the Dodgers in order, including a lovely strikeout of Hyeseong Kim, then retiring Betts and Ohtani. That took us to the ninth, and Torey Lovullo sent out Ryan Thompson to preserve a six-run lead. Now, subsequent events caused some to blame Lovullo. But if you can’t use a pitcher in that situation, when CAN you use them? After all, teams with exactly a six-run lead going into the ninth have won the last 464 consecutive games. To all intents and purposes, it’s the equivalent of a gimme in golf, and it doesn’t make much difference to the odds, who you are facing, or how bad your bullpen is.

That did not prevent near hysteria from breaking out, as Ryan Thompson had a bit of a melt-down. Some of it was his own responsibility, in particular, failing to cover first on a ground-ball. Some of it was home-plate umpire David Rackley – the same guy who, as KJKrug noted, screwed us in Game 3 of the 2023 World Series – suddenly having a strike-zone the size of a gnat’s bum, The Dodgers scored twice, and had the tying run on deck, in the shape of Ohtani. Lovullo opted not to take the risk, brought in Shelby Miller, who promptly retired Kim for the save. Below you’ll find the Fangraph: contrary to sentiment in the GDT, it was basically a flat-lined victory after the third.

You might wish to ponder how tense things would have been without those early gift runs, and also the basically trivial impact Thompson had on the game: -1.1%. For all those seeking to pillory Torey for putting him in the game, I’ll ask the same question which no Lovullo critic could answer in the Gameday Thread. If you cannot use a reliever to get three outs in the ninth with a six-run lead, when CAN you use them? There’s a tremendous tendency to blame Lovullo – usually in hindsight – for the players not performing, and to me, that kind of criticism is particularly dumb. He did what he could to give Miller the night off, and it SHOULD have worked. That’s how baseball is.

A lot of comments in the Gameday Thread, for obvious reasons: we ended up cracking 600 for the first time, which is a season high! Thanks to all who participated. Except the one guy who called me “an idiot”. 🙂 Comment of the night to Diamondhacks:

It’s now well past my bedtime, with a work-day tomorrow. By far the most important thing is, we won the game, and have two chances to take the series in Los Angeles. Tomorrow is the first of those, though it promises to be a much harder proposition. We face the LA’s ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has a 2.12 ERA. We’ll be sending up Ryne Nelson, now a regular member of the rotation due to the loss of Eduardo Rodriguez. But, for now, we salute Brandon Pfaadt, the first pitcher in the major leagues to have won seven games! I dread to think what his FIP will look like tomorrow though. Probably considerably worse than the current figure of 4.41!