Every time the D-Backs have a dramatic finish to a game like Ketel Marte’s electric walk-off homer last night, I always half expect the team to show some lethargy the next day. That certainly hasn’t been the case this year to this point and that’s a real credit to the coaching staff and the veteran players who are able to ground the younger, less experienced players around them for the marathon of a season ahead of them. It also doesn’t hurt when you have a team leader like Marte playing like the MVP-candidate
he can be either. Over his last ten games, he owns a .325/.378/.625 slash line and unsurprisingly the team has gone 7-3 in those contests while Marte has bumped his OPS up by nearly 80 points. I knew that there was some positive regression in store for him, but I didn’t quite expect these kinds of results. If he can continue something even close to this kind of contribution while Corbin Carroll and Nolan Arenado maintain their respective paces, this offense could truly be elite. But even elite offenses need to be buoyed by their pitching and the team certainly got what they needed tonight.
I won’t try to pretend that Merrill Kelly has regained the form that made him the second-most valuable pitcher on the team’s pitching staff last year. After all, he still owns an ERA above five (5.71 to be exact), an inflated WHIP (1.51), and a home run rate (4.5%) that would make some pitchers blush. But he’s certainly looked closer to the former pitcher in his last two games and it couldn’t come at a better time for the team as the offense finally starts to look like the one we all expected. There should also be some additional grace granted to him given the injury recovery he is still working through. And while no one expected a repeat masterful performance of his first career complete game, tonight’s performance was perhaps more workmanlike. He had just one clean inning of work on the outing and dealt with various amounts of traffic throughout the afternoon allowing eight hits but thankfully no walks. One of those bugaboos almost immediately raised their heads though as Casey Schmitt took his eighth pitch of the day out to the Arizona bullpen to give the Giants a very early lead. They plated another run the next inning off a combination of a Matt Chapman single and Bryce Eldridge double that included a misplay by rookie Ryan Waldschmidt making just his 10th appearance in centerfield. The Giants earned their final run off three singles from Chapman, Daniel Susac, and Drew Gilbert but were then completely shut down by a parade of Arizona relievers.
While Kelly was wriggling out of jam after jam, his team’s offense was creating threats of their own, starting in the very first inning when Marte leadoff the game with a deep double before scoring on a Geraldo Perdomo sacrifice fly. Marte was again at the center of the action in the third when he demolished an absolute meatball of a Tyler Mahle fastball that had little movement and was left middle-middle for two more runs. There’s been plenty of discussion from Torey Lovullo on the team’s pitchers allowing a single “big inning” rather than a series of smaller rallies. Thankfully, the D-Backs were on the producing side of a big inning this afternoon as they loaded the bases with no outs on three consecutive singles from Tim Tawa, Waldschmidt, and the most unlikely bunt single from Marte. Ildemaro Vargas was able to plate Tawa on a weak groundball to first base, but it wasn’t what we’ve come to expect from him this year. Instead, it was Perdomo who delivered the big hit with a shot through the right side of the infield to score two more runs that continues an uptick in his offensive contributions over the past week or so.
Maybe it’s slightly selfish of me as a fan, but there’s something very satisfying about sweeping an opponent who’s struggling. I understand that series victories are laudable and would translate to an excellent record at the end of the year, but sweeps give the team that much more breathing room when they inevitably struggle somewhere down the road. They’ll hopefully keep this positive momentum going tomorrow when the Rockies make their season debut at Chase Field starting tomorrow evening.
