Game Summary
On a day when the Mets and Reds were victorious, tonight’s game felt like a must-win to keep treading water in the Wild Card chase. Things got off to a good start against Taijuan Walker when the Snakes’ offense scored a pair of runs in the first inning, including a potentially slump-busting dinger from Ketel Marte. After that inning, though, the offense was held scoreless by a pair of Walkers (Taijuan W. and W. Buehler). There were a couple more scoring opportunities in the 3rd and 8th innings, but
for the vast majority of the rest of the night there was very little happening in the bottom halves of innings. It was great to see Ketel finish a triple short of the cycle and Corbin and Gabi both reached twice, but the rest of the lineup left much to be desired.
The pitching staff was every bit as ‘blah’ as the offense. Ryne Nelson wasn’t bad, per se, but he wasn’t good, either. His pitch count climbed rapidly after an easy 1st inning, and it seemed like he was constantly fighting his command. The bullpen, outside of an awesome debut from Philip Abner, was a train wreck with 5 ER allowed and a WHIP of nearly 3 in 3.1 innings from Beeks, Rashi, and Woodford. The staff did do a good job limiting Schwarber and Harper to harmless walks and singles, but 5 other Phillies reached base multiple times, negating any good work done by limiting the 2 monster lefties.
Bad results on the field. Bad results on the out-of-town scoreboard. Bad Friday night. Blah.
Loss Probability and Box Score
Outside the Box Score
- Corbin and Gabi followed the Ketel’s first inning homer with back-to-back singles. Gabi’s single came during a Corbin steal attempt. With the second baseman covering the bag, Gabi had plenty of room to shoot the ball through Gabi Lane. The ball nearly hit Corbin who had to jump over the ball as it whizzed under his feet.
- The first inning action kept rolling when Blaze Alexander was credited with an RBI after he beat out a GIDP with Corbin on third. Originally Blaze was ruled out which would have negated the run from scoring, but it was pretty obvious live that he was safe. After Torey challenged the play, Blaze was ruled safe and the D-Backs had their second run of the inning. Unfortunately, Blaze wasn’t able to turn his speed into a stolen base, as he was caught trying to steal second to end the inning.
- Ryne Nelson only needed 12 pitches to retire the side in the first, but he labored much more in the second, needing 22 pitches and a spectacular defensive play to get out of the second inning. Geraldo Perdomo, who already had a whirling dervish of a throw to retire Schwarber on his card for the night, had to dive DEEP into the hole between short and third to stop a sharp groundball from Weston Wilson. Domo then went from full prone position on the deck to a throwing motion quick as a cat and unleashed rocket that hit Tawa right in the numbers for the inning ending out.
- After ADC led off the second inning with a ringing single to right, the Rattle of the lineup (Alek, Tawa, and Jake tonight) saw a total of 5 combined pitches to record three relatively uncompetitive outs.
- In the top of the third inning, Ryne Nelson beat Kyle Schwarber with an inside fastball for a swinging strike 3. It was Nelly’s hardest throw of the night, 97.6mph, and it was way inside off the plate. Kyle Schwarber is a really hard guy to get out inside, but Nelly had the juice to get it done.
- In the bottom of the third, Domo and Carroll were at the corners with 2 outs, setting up a perfect opportunity for Corbin to go for his 30th steal of the season. Sure enough, Corbin took off on the very first pitch of the at bat, but Blaze swung and grounded out weakly to second to kill the scoring opportunity and Corbin’s steal attempt.
- Ketel’s slump appeared to be over after his first 3 plate attempts in tonight’s game. The 1st inning homer was obviously great, but then he worked a full count before striking out in his second at bat (seeing enough pitches to get to a full count is a win in itself considering the slump he’s been in). In the fifth inning, he blasted a double half way up the batter’s eye in center field.
- Nick Castellanos came on as a pinch hitter in the 6th to face lefty Jalen Beeks and nearly made a stupendous gaffe. With a full count, Castellanos took a pitch at the bottom of the zone for a called strike 3 (correctly called according to the TV box), but Castellanos thought it was sign to be Ball 4 and started walking across home plate as he was being called out. At the same time, the Phillies runner was attempting to steal second. Gabi popped up to throw to second, but with Castellanos blocking the plate Gabi ate the throw. Had he tried to throw, he surely would have hit Castellanos and interference would’ve been called, sending the runner back to first. That would’ve been a big call because the very next hitter smacked a single to left, scoring the go-ahead runner from second base.
- Gabi Moreno did throw to second on the next runner trying to steal second in the 6th inning, and after Torey challenged, Gabi got his man. The initial call was safe on the play, but Gabi’s throw was right on the money and Domo made a fast tag directly on the runner’s outstretched arm immediately before his palms hit the bag.
- The first batter Philip Abner faced in his major league career was Kyle Schwarber. In a critical situation, runner on and already down by 1 run, Abner made Schwarber look silly by forcing him into a 3/4 whiff of a neck high 90mph fastball. His reward for his first MLB strikeout? Getting to face Bryce Harper, who ended up rolling a grounder just outside of Tawa’s reach at first. Abner ended up loading the bases when he walked the next hitter, bringing up the lefty Brandon Marsh. After getting to a full count, Abner dotted a fastball on the outside corner to get his first looking strikeout of his career. Congratulations, Philip!
- Blaze Alexander made a fielding gaffe that came back to bite us immediately in the top of the 8th. The Phillies leadoff man hit a little bouncer that caught Blaze on an in-between hop and it clanked off his glove. After the very next at bat, that gift runner for the Phils was trotting home after Nick Castellanos’ home run into the Snakes bullpen.
- The D-Backs couldn’t get a thing going against Buehler, who the Phillies used as a split-starter with Taijuan Walker. At least, they couldn’t get anything going until the 8th inning where Ketel got a 1-out single followed by 2-out walks from Gabi and Blaze, which forced the Phils to bring in a lefty to face ADC. Torey countered with Jordan Lawlar, representing the go-ahead run in the bottom of the 8th inning. Lawlar flinched, popping up on the infield for the 3rd out of the inning.
Comment of the Game
It was a very light Friday night GDT, finishing at 140 comments at time of publishing. Of those 140, only a couple went Sedona Red. Tonight’s COTG is awarded to KJ Krug on her assessment of Torey’s challenge to change a GIDP to an RBI Fielder’s Choice for Blaze (Torey was a rare 2-for-2 on challenges tonight!):
Coming Up
The Diamondbacks face the Phightins in the second game of this critical September series tomorrow with first pitch at 5:10pm Arizona time. Zac Gallen is getting the ball for the good guys and he will be opposed by right-hander Aaron Nola who is 4-9 with a 6.44 ERA on the year. With postseason chances on genuine life support, maybe we can all just relax and enjoy tomorrow’s game for what it is: one of our final chances to enjoy D-Backs baseball in 2025. Swing over to the GDT and take in some baseball in the regular season’s penultimate weekend with the ‘Pit.
