Those of us who are still waiting for the Bus to the Postseason have suffered some disappointment over the last few days, and I too have felt that disappointment. Last night’s loss, when we held a lead going into the bottom of the ninth, was indeed heartbreaking. But, well, you know. Brandon Pfaadt is the way he is when he’s not pitching at Chase Field, and our bullpen is our bullpen, and so, well. You know.
Tonight we had Ryne Nelson taking the mound for us, so that was good. Ryne has, after all, been our best and most consistently reliable starting pitcher by far in 2025, even though he wasn’t moved back into the rotation full-time until June 7. As a starter, he’s pitched 117 innings for us over 21 starts, with a 3.08 ERA (including tonight’s outing). That’s pretty damn good.
Thing was, tonight we were facing Joe Ryan, one of the handful of actually good Twins players this year who Minnesota didn’t move at the trade deadline. He was an All-Star for the Twins this year, and through the All-Star Break he was sporting a 9-3 record and a 2.72 ERA. So, as DBE noted in their series preview, Ryan is tough: “Ryan gets batters out and limits hard contact. His fastball, that he doesn’t even throw that hard, seems unhittable.”
Seriously, people, read the series previews that DBE and ISH and Makakilo. I always make a point of doing so, and they always prove invaluable to me, whether they’re previewing a series where I’m going to be recapping a game or not. They do great work, and their efforts deserve a lot more love and a lot more eyeballs than I feel like they get. Just sayin’. Anyway.
Tonight, that turned out to not be so much of a problem, actually. Ryan’s stuff wasn’t the issue, his pitch count was. I’m not sure why, really….coming into the game, he had 176 strikeouts and 34 walks for the season, which suggests a pitcher whose control is pretty durned solid. But we hung a lot of pitches on him early, and even though we didn’t score until the fourth, we made him throw 63 pitches as he tried to record his first nine outs.
A big part of that was a number of long-patient at bats by Diamondbacks hitters. Those at bats didn’t necessarily lead to baserunners—we only managed two singles and two walks through those first three innings—but in Ryan’s first trip through the Diamondbacks lineup, four of our players forced him to throw seven or more pitches in their plate appearances. Those sorts of lengthy at-bats usually pay off, sooner or later.
For us, that payoff came in the top of the fourth, as Adrian Del Castillo led things off with a 10-pitch at bat off Ryan that ended with an ADC double to the wall in right center field. Blaze Alexander then saw seven pitches before grounding out to short on the eighth pitch, before Alek Thomas came to the plate for the second time—it his first AB he’d fouled out to third on the first pitch he saw—and again wasn’t terribly patient. This time, though, he didn’t need to be, as he sent the third pitch he saw from Ryan 440 feet into the right field bleachers:
In the Gameday Thread, we’d just been discussing how much Alek had been sucking recently. I think he might have heard us. If so, good. 2-0 D-BACKS
That was all the run-producing offense we managed until we went to extras, but by the end of the top of the fourth Ryan was at 93 pitches, so his night ended early. So we can stop talking about that for now and discuss Ryne Nelson.
Nelson was excellent tonight, to put it simply. It wasn’t easy, to be sure, and he had some rough innings. After giving up a leadoff single to Byron Buxton to start the game, he recovered and wound up recording a six pitch (!!!) bottom of the first, but then he loaded the bases to start the second thanks to three dinky singles to the right side (the first of which was initially scored an error on Blaze Alexander) before he buckled down and sat down the bottom three in the Minnesota lineup with two strikeouts and a grounder to first. That took him 22 pitches, but he completed two clean innings in the third and the fourth with a total of only 18 more pitches thrown. He threw 20 more pitches in the fifth, though the only blemish was a one-out walk, and then got into trouble again in the sixth, as he walked the first two batters he faced. The real kicker was Twins left fielder Austin Martin to lead off the inning, who drew a 13-pitch base on balls. A double-play grounder to Geraldo Perdomo at short and then a Royce Lewis strikeout ended things, but it also ended our hopes that Ryne might go deeper than six innings in this start, as he started the inning at 64 pitches thrown and ended it with 88 pitches thrown. Still, he pitched six scoreless, and finished with a pitching line of 6 IP, 0 R, 4 H, 4 K and 3 BB.
Despite a couple of singles in the bottom of the seventh, Brandyn Garcia and Ryan Thompson combined to put up another zero, and then Taylor Rashi, our one-time putative low-velocity closer, took the mound for the eighth. He recorded all three outs on two Ks and a weak pop-up to short to end the inning, but in between those outs he also allowed a double, a walk, and two singles to allow the Twins to tie things up. 2-2 TIE
Meanwhile, we were managing nothing against the Minnesota bullpen, despite loading the bases with nobody out in the fifth, and so we steamed into the bottom of the ninth with the score all knotted up and John Curtiss climbing up onto the hill. Curtiss did his job, pitching around a one-out Austin Martin single to send us to extras.
There had been some defensive substitutions and pinch-hitters and whatnot for us in the later innings, so Jorge Barrosa wound up starting the top of the tenth as our ghost runner on second. Perdomo advanced him to third with a sacrifice bunt, but then Ketel Marte struck out looking against Cole Sands, who closed out last night’s game for Minnesota and I guess is their closer? Anyway. Sands issued an intentional walk to Corbin Carroll, who promptly stole second. Gabriel Moreno dribbled an infield single to short to score Barrosa and advance Carroll to third. Adrian Del Castillo drew a walk to load the bases with two outs. Blaze Alexander, who hadn’t done much of anything at the plate since a meaningless single in the top of the second, got to two strikes off Sands before floating a fly ball deep into the right field corner that hit off the wall for an opposite-field two-run double:
Carroll scored from third, Moreno scored from second, and that gave us a three-run lead that Curtiss was able to protect with no trouble in his second inning of relief to send our boys back to the hotel happy. 5-2 D-BACKS
Win Probability, courtesy of FanGraphs
Mary Richards: Ryne Nelson (pitching line above, +35.4% WPA), Gabriel Moreno (5 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 1 RBI, 1 K, +24.2% WPA), John Curtiss (2 IP, 0 R, 1 H, 2 K, +23.0% WPA)
Lou Grant: Blaze Alexander (5 AB, 2 H, 1 2B, 2 RBI, 1 K, +18.1 % WPA), Alek Thomas (3 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 HR, 2 RBI, +13.1% WPA)
Ted Baxter: Taylor Rashi (1 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 2 K, 1 BB, -33.9% WPA), Ketel Marte (5 AB, 1 H, 2 K, -22.9% WPA)
We had a remarkably well-attended Gameday Thread tonight, that was almost entirely congenial and pleasant despite a bit of unfortunate trollishness. A good time was had by just about all, though, I hope and trust….certainly the final outcome helped with that. But we got to a whopping 432 comments at time of writing, and by popular acclaim the Comment of the Game goes to kilnborn for this imagining of what Alexander said before marching to the plate to hit that double in the top of the tenth that sealed the game:
If you don’t get it, I think it has something to do with some of the bling that Blaze is now starting to wear, possibly with the encouragement of and in consultation with Ketel Marte. Anyway.
Join us tomorrow, if you can resist the pull of Hand Egg Week 2, as we look to keep ourselves on the outer fringes of postseason contention and go for the series win against the Twins. Nabil Crismatt goes for us, Bailey Ober goes for them, first pitch is scheduled for 11:10am AZ time. Hope to see you there!
As always, thank you for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!