24 hours after the Dbacks suffered a crushing loss in the bottom of the 9th, the Dbacks came back with an absolute vengeance to obliterate the Cardinals 14-1 to even the series at 1-1. In what seems to be another trend for this team, when they win they win big! A lot happened in this game and I will do my best to cover it all, but if there is another moment I missed please add it in the comments.
The Cardinals got on the board first in the first inning with a Contreras home run, but offense came on strong in the 3rd inning off Steven Matz when with 2 outs Lourdes Gurriel Jr knocked in Jake McCarthy with a single to shallow right field to tie the game at 1-1. In these big games and with the struggles this team has had in high leverage situations as I wrote about earlier, it is important to highlight those that came through when it really mattered and boy did Christian Walker who followed Gurriel Jr.’s RBI with a 3 run mammoth home run over the bullpen. This was his 4th of the year and his first since April 2nd. The Dbacks ended the 3rd inning with a 4-1 lead.
Then in the 5th inning, things got out of hand. Ketel Marte started the inning off with a double to deep right center field, and then Gabi who struck out when he got beat bad by a fastball inside, stepped up and hammered a fastball to left center field to bring home Marte. Gurriel followed with another single, then Grichuk with his 1,000th career hit. As baseball would have it Grichuk recorded his 1,000th career hit in the same ballpark where it all started for him when he was initially drafted by the Cardinals. Pavin Smith followed by narrowly missing an opposite field home run by hitting a double about half way up the wall in left field. The new guy Kevin Newman then followed by driving a no doubter into Big Mac Land his first as a Dback. The Dbacks would add on 4 more runs total in the 3rd inning followed by 6 more in the 5th.
Pavin Smith had his first 2 hits of the season with the RBI double in the 3rd inning followed in the 6th inning with a grand slam, his second career grand slam in this ballpark as he also did so in April 2023. Even more impressive were both of Smith’s big hits came off of a left handed pitcher!
Not going to lie, the day started out pretty poorly with the news of Merrill Kelly officially headed to the 15 day DL, as well as Kyle Nelson, and Miguel Castro. But to his credit Tommy Henry stepped up and gave this team exactly what it needed by going 6 strong innings. The critique of Tommy when they sent him down just a few weeks ago was Tommy needed to be more aggressive and boy was he ever tonight. He leaned heavily on his curveball throwing it a career high 30 times tonight. There were multiple times it looked like things could unravel for Tommy, but each time he answered the call with an aggressive approach. Final line for Henry was 6 innings 1 run on 5 hits and 6 K’s. Logan Allen then came in and provided his second straight quality relief outing where he logged his first career save.
Tonight was the first time in Dbacks history they have won 3 games by atleast 13 runs. Now you have Jordan Montgomery going tomorrow in the early game.
Several things for me:
- Dbacks this season have been feast or famine. I wrote about earlier how this team has the worst BA and ERA in MLB in high leverage situations, but in low to medium leverage this team does simply incredible! Dbacks pitching and offense look pretty good in overall numbers but it is largely due to this team really thriving when the pressure is low and the game is already in the bag.
- Gabi’s arm continues to be absolutely elite as he nabbed Nolan Gorman trying to swipe 3rd base despite Henry letting him get a huge lead and throwing a slow curve ball.
- As much as we like to hate on Pavin, he did come through pretty big for this team today, especially considering he was facing LHP. That being said, as I mentioned earlier we also saw him hit a Grand Slam almost exactly a year ago in the same exact ballpark. All I am saying is Pavin definitely still needs to earn it.
- The biggest news of the day for me is Paul Sewald logging 2 strikeouts in his rehab outing with the Reno Aces. His fastball also hit 92 MPH 2 times. Adding him back to this bullpen cant come soon enough.
- Kristian Robinson also came back from the IL today and started in Amarillo and logged an RBI while Deyvison De Los Santos continued his absolute trouncing of AA pitching by going 4-5 and hitting an absolute piss missel for his 5th home run of the young season raising his OPS to a staggering 1.095!
All and all what started out as a pretty terrible day for the organization with all of the injury news, turned into a pretty positive day. The Dbacks are positioned well to win the 3 game series tomorrow with Jordan Montgomery looking to follow up his sensational Dbacks debut against Kyle Gibson. Really looking forward to this team hopefully using a day like today to build some momentum.
With so much happening Im sure I forgot some stuff, but please comment below your favorite moments from the game today.
Cheers!