Throughout the course of the NBA season, good teams will sometimes lose thanks to an unexpected source of scoring from the other side. Think the Sleepy Floyd Game or Jeremy Lin. Sometimes, the other guy just can’t miss. Tonight, the Diamondbacks faced their own version of that when Kody Clemens went nuclear. Clemens, son of Roger (yes, that Roger), came into the night with an 88 wRC+; for comparison’s sake that’s a shade worse than Ildemaro Vargas’ wRC+ of 89. So of course it would be tonight that Clemens has the game of his life with 3 HRs and a fourth hit that was a double off the wall. That’s how baseball goes sometimes.
The Diamondbacks gave themselves a shot at victory despite some shaky defense and pitching thanks to Tawa in the 9-hole twice getting on to lead off the inning in the 7th and 9th. In the 7th, Tawa was driven in by Perdomo’s monster shot to right, then in the 9th, he came home on a single from Corbin to bring the Snakes within one run of their hosts. Gabi then hit a no-doubt blast to score 3 more and give the good guys a 2-run lead. There was still only one out in the inning at the time of the homer, it was a pity that we couldn’t add on because…well our bullpen still had to get 3 outs.
Turns out our bullpen would barely get one out. The Diamondbacks sent out Jake Woodford who was taken to the wood shed by the aforementioned Kody Clemens, then Woodford loaded the bases still without recording an out which finally earned him the hook. Andrew Saalfrank then came on and walked the tying run home before giving up a sacrifice fly to deep center field to end the game. The rest of the pitching wasn’t great, either. Brandon Pfaadt started hot but couldn’t really get whiffs. When the batted balls that were finding gloves in the first 2 innings started to find grass in the next couple innings and his night was cut short, another poor performance in a frustrating season full of highs and lows for the young righty. The bullpen post-Pfaadt but before 9th inning melt down was okay, with just a single ER going on the board between Brandon’s exit with 2 outs in the 5th and the 9th.
It would have been a great night to eke out a win, with several teams around us in the Wild Card hunt losing or having already lost. In the end, the pitching that this team has to rely on night-in, night-out is not something we can rely on. I don’t know that it’s anybody’s fault, it’s just what we have to work with right now. Still, we had a lot to cheer for during that top of the 9th rally so it wasn’t a terrible night of baseball. There appear to be precious few days of Diamondbacks baseball remaining so we gotta enjoy what we can while we can.
Loss Probability and Box Score
It was a light Friday night GDT early, but it certainly picked up once the game got tight in the 9th inning. A total of 226 comments at time of publishing, but only a few Sedona Red. Tonight’s COTG is awarded to Worleybird for checking into the game just in time to see Gabi’s go ahead bomb (though I don’t know if I can charge the following bullpen meltdown to their account or not):
The Diamondbacks face the Twins in the second game of this interleague series tomorrow with first pitch at 4:10pm Arizona time. Ryne Nelson is getting the ball for the good guys and he will be opposed by right-hander Joe Ryan who is 13-10 with a 3.32 ERA on the year. It will be more tough sledding against the starter, but hopefully the offense keeps rolling. And Kody Clemens hits more like, oh, Kody Clemens.