The Dbacks offense was robbed of a home run not once but twice in this one as quite possibly the most dominant start of Merrill Kelly’s career was wasted by lack of offense.
The Dbacks were just plain robbed in this one… Literally. Merrill Kelly pitched perhaps the best game of his Dbacks career while the offense was robbed of a home run not once but twice!
The story of the game was Merrill Kelly who came out throwing darts! 3 of the fastest 4 pitches of his career were thrown tonight as he was consistently hitting 95-96 early in this game. Its crazy how much Kelly’s changeup drops when he is throwing it hard like he was today at 90-91 mph. This could be a developing trend for Kelly. Torey credited the increased velocity to the extra days rest a couple of days ago. Most impressive perhaps was that Kelly needed just 77 pitches to get through the 7 innings. Curious Torey chose to pull him at such a low pitch count in still just a 1 run ball game at the time given the bullpen’s struggles. However after the game Torey admitted that he pulled Merrill after Merrill experienced “A tiny amount of discomfort in one of his calves”.
The lone blemish on Kelly was a solo home run allowed to Arraez on a ball that wouldn’t have even been a home run at Chase Field.
As mentioned in the title, the Dbacks were robbed of home runs twice. Once in the 5th inning of what would have been a 2 run shot by Corbin Carroll to dead center, and later in the 7 on a ball hit to right field by Josh Naylor. In total the Padres robbed the Dbacks of 3 runs.
On top of being robbed by the Padres outfield, the Dbacks could absolutely not buy a hit with RISP as the Dbacks wound up going 0-8. On top of that, the Dbacks left an astonishing 9 runners on base highlighted by them leaving the bases loaded twice. Once on a Ketel Marte strikeout.
All in all, this was a good ol fashioned pitchers duel. A rarity in todays game. A rarity for the Dbacks this season. I’m taking the approach of appreciating this game rather than stewing over the missed opportunities on offense. Especially since our offense has been one of the best in the league. Hard to justify getting too upset by an off night where they clearly were hitting the ball hard, just getting unlucky.
Side note: The hottest pitcher in this Dbacks system Hayden Durke was promoted to Reno today and made his first appearance logging a scoreless inning of relief. Wouldn’t mind seeing him in a Dbacks uniform soon!