The Arizona Diamondbacks did enough to give themselves a chance to win with Pittsburgh Pirates rookie phenom Paul Skenes on the mound and capitalized with a rally off the bullpen in a narrow 6-5 victory.
With Skenes on the mound, that meant the D-backs required at least a solid performance from Ryne Nelson and would likely have to score some runs off Pittsburgh’s bullpen as well to have a shot.
Skenes in his 13 career starts entered Sunday allowing more than one earned run in just five of those, with the max being three. No one has come close to teeing off on him yet. His career high for hits allowed is six, and as for control issues, he’s walked three batters just once.
All of that occurred. Nelson wasn’t great but four earned runs in five innings on six hits and two walks at least kept Arizona in the game. Skenes was not superhuman, either, giving up five hits and three walks for two earned runs over 5.1 innings.
With two on and two out in the seventh, Joc Pederson drilled a three-run homer to left-center to give Arizona a 5-4 lead after it had scored two in the sixth at the tail-end of Skenes’ outing. The D-backs did a great job working counts on Skenes, who had his pitch count reach triple digits in that inning. When he was pulled, Jake McCarthy knocked in a run with a single after Ketel Marte’s sac fly off Skenes.
Marte smashed yet another insurance run homer in the ninth, his second of the series, to make it 6-4. It was the seventh homer for Marte in the ninth inning this season, the most in baseball.
Before that, it appeared the D-backs were letting a winnable one slip away. A slight misplay by Corbin Carroll in right field on a two-RBI triple could have saved a run. Arizona’s offense had other opportunities to do damage to Skenes.
But Pederson’s blast evened all that out and the D-backs bullpen nearly did too before the ninth got real interesting.
Justin Martinez and Dylan Floro put up a scoreless seventh and eighth, respectively, before Ryan Thompson got the ninth. The first two Pirates batters reached before a huge pop out of a bunt added an out ahead of Brian Reynolds, Pittsburgh’s best hitter.
Reynolds fell behind 1-2 and then proceeded to take seven more pitches, fouling off four of them. The final one was the first by Thompson to find a friendly part of the zone and Reynolds smacked it into right for a RBI single. With Thompson reeling and runners on the corners at one out, D-backs manager Torey Lovullo pulled Thompson for A.J. Puk.
Puk was this time the one to be in a compromised position of the count, going down 3-0 against Oneil Cruz. Puk then threw two strikes and saw the next five pitches fouled off. No. 11 of the at-bat was swung at by Cruz and missed for the second out. The third out was more immediate, a shallow fly out to right that Carroll ran down to close it out.
Paul Sewald also appeared in the sixth and tossed a scoreless inning for the second straight game since he was removed from the closer role earlier in the week.
Nine of his 11 four-seam fastballs over the weekend were above his average velocity on the year, an indication that the mechanical issues Lovullo alluded to with Sewald have been implemented properly. It wasn’t perfect, as Pittsburgh knocked a double off Sewald on Sunday and a sliding Marte stop to end the sixth inning saved a run, but it is a needed confidence boost for Sewald who could still prove to be valuable to Arizona later in the season.
Carroll tripled, singled and walked, the third time in the last eight games he’s reached base three times. He has now gotten on in 20 straight games.
The Atlanta Braves lost on Sunday, putting the D-backs just a half-game back of the top National League Wild Card spot. Arizona is 11-4 since the All-Star break.