Once again, I didn’t have high hopes going into this game, with Eduardo Rodriguez taking the mound and facing off against Tyler Glasnow. Aside from the month of June, when he pitched to a 1.98 ERA in five starts, ERod has been abjectly terrible for us. In his five September starts coming into tonight, he’d allowed 17 earned runs in 26.1 innings pitched. In case you’re a bit weak on your math, that’s, well….it’s bad. Very bad. Glasnow, meanwhile, has been injured for a lot of the year, because that’s what
Tyler Glasnow does—he pitched at least the first few innings tonight with blood dripping off his throwing hand—but when he’s not been doing that, he’s been enjoying a 3.36 ERA in 13 starts, until tonight.
So imagine my surprise when a full-on pitching duel broke out.
Our Diamondbacks only managed two baserunners through the first six innings of Glasnow’s start—a one-out Ketel Marte hit-by-pitch in the top of the fourth, and an Ildemaro Vargas infield single that ended Glasnow’s no-hit bid with one out in the top of the sixth.
Meanwhile, however, Eduardo matched Glasnow zero for zero through those six innings. His outing was a lot less clean and a lot more dicey at various points—he had traffic on the bases in every inning, he walked five Doyers, he surrendered four hits, and he needed the defense to bail him out on a couple of occasions. But he got it done, and the team got it done behind him, thanks to stuff like Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. making a massive outfield assist when ERod had put runners on second and third with nobody out in the bottom of the fifth:
The Diamondbacks finally broke things open a little bit when Glasnow came out to start the seventh. It made sense, given that he had only thrown 78 pitches to that point. Corbin Carroll was leading off the inning for us, and Corbin made him pay:
Gurriel and Blaze Alexander followed with back-to-back doubles, and then Gabriel Moreno hit a sacrifice fly to center that, thanks to a throwing error by Los Angeles center fielder Andy Pages on the throw back into the infield, allowed both Lourdes and Blaze to score. 3-0 D-BACKS
For our part, ERod was done after six frames, so Bryce Jarvis took the ball for the seventh. He surrendered a leadoff single to left fielder Alex Call, then retired the 8- and 9-hole hitters in LA’s lineup to bring Shohei Ohtani to the plate. Torey Lovullo pulled Jarvis and brought in Andrew Saalfrank for the lefty-on-lefty matchup, but alas, it didn’t quite work out. Ohtani walked, then Mookie Betts blooped a single into center that allowed Call to score, before finally retiring Will Smith on a fly ball to center. 3-1 D-BACKS
Up to that point, we’d shut out the hated Doyers for 15 2/3 innings, so it was sad to see that end. But no lasting harm was done. Our boys threatened in the eighth but couldn’t get anymore runs home despite getting runners on second and third with two outs. Saalfrank came back out and tossed a scoreless eighth (and, incidentally, recorded our first 1-2-3 inning of the night).
Jake Woodford, who is apparently our new closer (?!??), was warming up to pitch the bottom of the ninth, but first we had to get through in the top of the frame. Kirby Yates, who we saw in last night’s ballgame, came out for the top of the ninth, and sadly, he robbed Jake of the chance to record the third save of his career.
Here’s how that happened: Blaze Alexander led things off with an infield single, then promptly stole second. After Moreno popped out to second, Jake McCarthy hit a weak liner into center that Pages made a nice sliding grab on. He threw to Miguel Vargas at second, trying to double off Blaze, but Vargas clanked the ball, and Blaze alertly took third. Tyler Locklear than drew a pretty impressive walk to bring Ildemaro Vargas to the plate. Ildemaro wasted little time giving us some needed insurance, launching the second pitch he saw from Yates over the wall in right to bring our score to its final state:
Woodford, despite it no longer being a save opportunity, came out and did his job admirably, sitting the Dodgers down in order to end things on a happy note. 6-1 D-BACKS FINAL
Win Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
King for a Day: Eduardo Rodriguez (6 IP, 0 R, 4 H, 4 BB, 4 K, +35.4% WPA)
Crown Prince of Chavez Ravine: Corbin Carroll (4 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 1 RBI, 1 HR, 1 2B, 1 K, +17.0% WPA)
Quite the lively and well-populated Gameday Thread, especially for a game that I don’t think anyone expected was going to go particularly well. There are 290 comments at time of writing, and the Comment of the Game goes to McDermott, for this late-breaking observation that underscores how much potential this team has had and continues to have as the sun sets on 2025 and we look forward to 2026:
Stop by tomorrow as we look not to secure a series split or avoid a sweep, but to actually try to complete the sweep after securing the series win tonight! Crazy times! And to sweep FTD out of Chavez Latrine would be oh so sweet on our last trip there this season. Brandon Pfaadt goes for us, Yoshinobu Yamamoto goes for the Doyers, first pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time. Hope you can join us, and don’t forget to bring your broom.
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!
