Game Summary
Another Friday night, another tough loss. This week’s episode featured outstanding starting pitching from the hologram himself, Eduardo Rodriguez, as well as some incredible defense. Unfortunately, the offense didn’t come along for the ride and is now riding a streak of 3 runs scored in 27 innings since that 3-run go-ahead bomb off the bat of the rarely-seen-again Jose Fernandez. Sewald will get plenty of hate for his role in this outcome, but feel free to let me know the last time a team won a game
when scoring 0 runs.
Eduardo Rodriguez truly does look like a new pitcher after the WBC and this offseason where he lost 30 pounds (per the Apple TV broadcast tonight). He was extremely efficient, needing 90 pitches to go 7 strong innings and rarely feeling like he was in trouble. The defense made a couple spectacular plays to back up ERod and our setup man, Juan Morillo. Corbin’s leaping grab in the first and Alek’s diving play in the 8th highlighted everything the Diamondbacks were hoping for when building out this roster this offseason: run prevention.
Unfortunately, the other side of the run prevention coin is run generation, and the Serpientes just couldn’t get anything going on that front, feeling like they were stuck in mud all night. Feel free to fact check me on this, but I don’t believe a single Diamondback reached third base all night. Grant Holmes was very effective and the 8-9 tandem of Suarez and Iglesias is top-shelf, but the Snakes just didn’t seem like they were able to make anyone work for their outs and they missed the few mistake pitches they were given. The lineup is extremely top-heavy right now, and if the Big 3 don’t do damage (combined 4-28 in the last 3 games), this team doesn’t have anyone left to reliably pick up the slack. When will Torey and the Front Office start pulling levers to try and jolt the offense? Too early to make big changes or should we just let it ride and hope to a return to the mean for our scuffling offense?
For the final bit, I’ll write about Paul Sewald. His velocity was down at 90mph on his two meatballs that were turned into the go-ahead home runs. I’m not gonna kill Torey for turning to him. The results have been there early on in the year and you gotta fire the bullets you have. However, this was the risk of building out the roster in the way Hazen did. We have a roster that’s costing almost as much as last year’s record-setting payroll, but we’re still here relying on Paul Sewald or a guy who signed a minor league contract to close out games for the foreseeable future. How much leash does Paul have? Is Loaisiga just going to be same story different character?
Loss Probability and Box Score
Outside the Box Score
- Drake Baldwin’s single in the top of the 1st was a perfectly placed check-swing squibber that fell dribbled perfectly between ERod, Ketel, and Santana.
- Matt Olson’s flout in the 1st inning was came courtesy of an absolutely amazing defensive play by Corbin in right field. Olson laced a 2-1 cutter into right that looked like it might be a homer off the bat. The camera switched to follow Corbin and you could tell he was tracking it and thought he had a shot at it, then he leapt into the air and snagged the ball out of the air from the middle of the warning track. Likely not a home run saving catch, but getting to that spot and leaping up on a 98mph line drive was still a very impressive feat.
- Corbin followed up his amazing defensive play with a less-than-amazing at bat. He swung at 3 straight sliders in the dirt and walked back to the dugout the first strikeout victim of the night.
- Nolan Arenado made really solid contact on his line drive in the second inning (103.3mph exit velocity!) but it was a little too close to the Braves left fielder who was able to come up with a diving catch to rob Nolan of a needed base hit. It’s a shame that his highest exit velocity to this point in the season resulted in an out, but that’s how it goes when you’re slumping.
- The pitchers were dealing through the first third of the game. ERod needed only 34 pitches to get through his first 3 innings while Grant Holmes only needed 38 pitches for his 3 innings. Holmes’ pitch count was inflated greatly by Tim Tawa’s plate appearance with 2 outs in the third. Tawa worked a great 9-pitch AB that resulted in a walk and was the first baserunner the Snakes had all night.
- Grant Holmes recorded a wild line out fielding Ketel’s 103mph liner back up the box. Holmes looked like he barely flinched as the ball went almost directly into his glove. The camera never even saw the ball so I half expected Holmes to just double over thinking he just got drilled in the chest. Crazy catch.
- ERod hurt himself in the 6th inning when he reached up to field a bouncer back up in the middle. He reached up and the ball bounced off his glove and as soon as ERod knew he didn’t field it cleanly he hit his glove in frustration because it killed the momentum of the ball and resulted in an infield single to put runners at the corners and 1 out with Matt Olson coming to the plate. ERod proceeded to get Olson to strike out on a check-swing appeal, then got Austin Riley to harmlessly groundout to Geraldo Perdomo. Huge momentum swing to keep the Braves off the board in that high leverage spot.
- Ketel Marte got the first hit for the Snakes in the 6th inning, drilling a liner the opposite way over Austin Riley at third for a 1-out single. That was right after Riley stole a hit from Tawa by making a running, bare-handed catch and throw to barely nip Timmy at first.
- Alek Thomas made an incredible diving/sliding catch to rob a double from Drake Baldwin in the 8th. With 2 outs, Baldwin looked like he hit a sure gapper but AT kept closing and laid out at the last possible second and kept the ball in his glove through a little barrel roll to bring the good guys up to the plate in a still scoreless game. What. A. Play.
- Sewald allowed back-to-back jacks to start off the ninth on a pair of 90mph fastballs in the middle of the zone. In Spring, he had been getting velocity back up to 92 range, but it was not there tonight.
Comment of the Game
The GameDay Thread was a humming along all night, finishing at 247 comments at time of publishing. Tonight’s COTG goes to Dano with this anti-AppleTV statement:
Coming Up
The Diamondbacks face the Braves for the third game of this series and still trying to get their first win of the set tomorrow afternoon with a 4:15pm start time on FOX. Right-hander Bryce Elder (1-0, 0.00) will take the mound for the Braves and the immaculate Michael Soroka (1-0, 0.00) takes the ball for the good guys. Another national telecast, let’s hope the boys don’t embarrass themselves!
