After cruising to a victory the night before, tonight was a much closer game that the Diamondbacks never quite felt like they were a part of. Brandon Pfaadt gave up an early home run to start the night off on the wrong foot, but was able to limit the damage most of the night, never having a complete meltdown inning that we’ve come to expect from Pfaadt. Giving up 4 1-run innings felt like a win for him after allowing near constant traffic on the base paths. In fact, the only 1-2-3 inning Pfaadt earned all night was the 6th, his final frame of the evening; in every other inning, he gave up at least one hit with one out or less in the inning, forcing him to work in high stress situations throughout.
The bullpen continued it’s run of above average play since the calendar turned to July, with trade deadline acquisitions Juan Burgos and Andrew Hoffman combining for 3 strikeouts, no runs allowed, and only facing one batter above the minimum in their 2 innings of work. Each had a walk as well, but their stuff allowed them to get away with their imprecise pitch execution. I’m definitely enjoying watching the latter innings of these post-deadline games when I can watch the young fellas grow and hopefully lay a foundation for success in future years.
For all that Brandon Pfaadt and the bullpen did to keep the team in this game, the offense just never felt like they had it tonight. So often this season, we’ve bemoaned the Diamondbacks offense wasted opportunities. Tonight, our problem wasn’t wasted opportunities, but rather it was lack of opportunities. On the night, the Snakes hit a solid .333 with RISP and only left 4 runners on base, but they only had 6 at bats with RISP, so they just didn’t give themselves enough bites at the apple. When Domo, Marte, and Carroll combine for a low impact 2-10 with just a pair of singles, the rest of the lineup really needs to up their game, and on this night, only Jake McCarthy, surprisingly hitting in the 5 hole, was up to the challenge. Jake’s 2 hits and 2 RBI marked his first game all year with multiple hits and multiple RBI in the same contest (to give some context to that, even Jose Herrera has 2 such games this year). The Rattle of the lineup was a woeful 0-10 with 4 strikeouts.
Loss Probability and Box Score
A very light Friday night in the GDT, with only 144 comments at time of publishing and very a few rec’d comments to choose from. While a couple comments did get more recs than this one, I immediately identified with Sighborg’s assessment of Jake’s spot in the lineup:
The Diamondbacks face the Rockies in the third game of this 4 game series tomorrow with a 5:10pm first pitch Arizona time. Ryne Nelson will be on the hill for the Snakes and he will be opposed by righty Chase Dollander who is 2-9 with a 6.35 ERA. Hopefully Ryne can bounce back from his rough last outing and the offense snaps out of tonight’s malaise to give us our second win in the series.