Game Summary
Coming into tonight’s contest, the Diamondbacks pitching staff was riding a wave of pretty incredible Home Run prevention. In the first week of September, the entire pitching staff had only allowed 2 HR combined. Since the Trade Deadline, the team’s HR/9 and HR/FB% were easily the best in the Major Leagues. Well, that trend came to a crashing halt tonight. Nabil Crismatt, a dumpster find to replace our original dumpster find when he went on the IL (Anthony DeSclafani), was pitching to an outstanding
2.14 ERA and had allowed a mere 5 ER in his first 4 games started with the Snakes. Tonight, he allowed 2 homers resulting in 4 ER in only 4 innings, his shortest outing of the season. The Home Run regression didn’t stop there, as Tony Disco made his return to the mound and allowed 3 dingers in 3 innings of work.
A total of 5 homers allowed matched our total number allowed since September 27th. Sometimes baseball is very simple. If we’re keeping the ball in the yard, the other team has to string hits together to score runs one at a time. Tonight, the Giants scored runs in bunches thanks to 3 multi-run homers.
The Diamondbacks offense wasn’t a no-show, they were just overrun by the tidal wave of slug coming from the other dugout. We put up 4 runs on Logan Webb, which is a rarity in itself, and we did it within the first 3 innings. A bases loaded triple by Jake McCarthy and a single with RISP by Blaze Alexander put us in a good place, but we just couldn’t string together the hits we needed after the third inning while our pitching staff was getting blasted in the bottom-halves of innings.
It was a regrettable game, but it’s nice to say that this type of game has been a rarity for the team lately. Hopefully the home run bug doesn’t have a long stay with our pitching staff. Watching baseball is a lot more fun when we’re the ones hitting home runs.
Loss Probability and Box Score
Outside the Box Score
- Logan Webb only needed 9 pitches to retire the top of the Snakes lineup in order in the first inning. Webb was displaying outstanding movement early, showing why he is one of the game’s best.
- Nabil Crismatt made the first 2 Giants hitters look absolutely silly, both striking out swinging wildly at changeups out of the zone. He ended up giving up a 2-out double before retiring the side on only 14 pitches.
- Logan Webb was bit by poor defense to give up the first 3 runs of the ballgame. Webb walked Gabi and Alek before inducing a groundball to second baseman Christian Koss for what looked like an inning ending fielder’s choice. Koss booted the grounder, resulting in bases loaded with Jake McCarthy coming up with the bases loaded and Jake turned on a breaking ball and blasted it to Triples Alley in right-center, hitting the wall on the fly. McCarthy cleared the bases and slid into second with a huge 2-out knock.
- Ketel Marte had to range over way into the hole between first and second to field a grounder in the second inning. With a runner at first, I figured Ketel would take the sure out at first, but with slow Matt Chapman running, Ketel took a chance and turned and made a jump throw to Domo covering second. The ball bounced off the dirt, but thankfully it wasn’t a short hop so Domo could easily pick the throw and record the out.
- Jake McCarthy made an awesome running grab to end the second inning, ranging far to his right to glove a line drive off the bat of Heliot Ramos that likely would have allowed the Giants to score the tying run from first if he didn’t make the play.
- Ketel smacked a hard grounder between the first and second baseman to lead off the third. The hit appeared to be perfectly placed and hit hard enough that it just snuck under the gloves of both defenders.
- Blaze Alexander came up with runners at first and second and 2 out. Blaze got a middle-middle fastball and just missed it, fouling it straight back. I commented that you can’t miss those mistakes from Webb, you’re not gonna get many of them. Well, Webb threw the exact same pitch in the exact same spot and Blaze didn’t miss it, driving the ball to right for an RBI single and giving the Snakes an extra run of insurance.
- Crismatt gave up a game-tying homer in the third and as soon as it left the bat, Nabil knew it. He let out a loud scream as he clenched his fists as the ball sailed WAY out to right field. The D-Backs pitchers have been very good/lucky at preventing homers over the last month+. That kind of luck wasn’t going to last forever.
- Corbin’s speed manufactured a scoring situation all by himself. He got on base hitting a slow grounder that would normally turn into a double play, but his speed made the Giants defense eat the ball and not even throw to first after recording the out at second. Then he challenged all-world catcher Patrick Bailey’s throwing arm by stealing second. The throw from Bailey squirted through the infield and Corbin got up and sped to third with 1-out in the inning. Unfortunately, the Snakes couldn’t cash in the opportunity with a liner hit right to the left fielder followed by a strikeout to strand Corbin at third.
- Brandyn Garcia came out spitting fire after Nabil Crismatt’s slo-mo pitching repertoire was lit up in the first 4 innings. Garcia’s high velocity made it a relatively easy 5th inning, then in the 6th, he ran into trouble after a long at bat against Matt Chapman resulted in a grounder to Perdomo, but Gerry never got a good handle on the ball and spiked his throw to first allowing the runner to reach safely. I wonder if an actual first baseman may have been able to scoop that throw and save the out.
- Two batters after Chapman reached on Domo’s error, Jung Hoo Lee came up with no out and runners at first and second. He squared to bunt and the ball bounced high off the dirt toward third. The bunt wasn’t particularly deep and it looked like Gabi would have a play at first, but the ball died when it came back to earth after that high initial pop. The ball barely bounced off the turf and Gabi couldn’t glove it.
- Geraldo Perdomo had a pivotal error earlier in the game, but he made a very, very nice play in the 9th, ranging to his right and gloving and throwing across his body in one quick motion to hit Vargas right in the numbers and retire the hard-running Christian Koss.
Comment of the Game
An extremely light Monday night GDT with 142 comments at time of publishing. The lack of Recs being handed out was so odd that Sighborg made a comment on it. Normally, I award COTG to the comment with the most Recs, but tonight, since there weren’t any Red Comments, I’m awarding the COTG to ChefAZ for his humorous reply to a thread on the virtues of a feet-first, pop-up slide vs. a headfirst slide:
Coming Up
The Diamondbacks face the Giants in the second game of this NL West series tomorrow with first pitch at 6:45pm Arizona time. Zac Gallen is tasked with being The Stopper and he will be opposed by old friend, left-hander Robbie Ray who is 10-6 with a 3.31 ERA on the year. If we’re going to keep our streak of series wins alive, we’re gonna have to get this one against a pretty tough customer. Go D-Backs!
