On a day when the Mets and Reds were victorious, tonight’s game felt like a must-win to keep treading water in the Wild Card chase. Things got off to a good start against Taijuan Walker when the Snakes’ offense scored a pair of runs in the first inning, including a potentially slump-busting dinger from Ketel Marte. After that inning, though, the offense was held scoreless by a pair of Walkers (Taijuan W. and W. Buehler). There were a couple more scoring opportunities in the 3rd and 8th innings, but for the vast majority of the rest of the night there was very little happening in the bottom halves of innings. It was great to see Ketel finish a triple short of the cycle and Corbin and Gabi both reached twice, but the rest of the lineup left much to be desired.
The pitching staff was every bit as ‘blah’ as the offense. Ryne Nelson wasn’t bad, per se, but he wasn’t good, either. His pitch count climbed rapidly after an easy 1st inning, and it seemed like he was constantly fighting his command. The bullpen, outside of an awesome debut from Philip Abner, was a train wreck with 5 ER allowed and a WHIP of nearly 3 in 3.1 innings from Beeks, Rashi, and Woodford. The staff did do a good job limiting Schwarber and Harper to harmless walks and singles, but 5 other Phillies reached base multiple times, negating any good work done by limiting the 2 monster lefties.
Bad results on the field. Bad results on the out-of-town scoreboard. Bad Friday night. Blah.
Loss Probability and Box Score
It was a very light Friday night GDT, finishing at 140 comments at time of publishing. Of those 140, only a couple went Sedona Red. Tonight’s COTG is awarded to KJ Krug on her assessment of Torey’s challenge to change a GIDP to an RBI Fielder’s Choice for Blaze (Torey was a rare 2-for-2 on challenges tonight!):
The Diamondbacks face the Phightins in the second game of this critical September series tomorrow with first pitch at 5:10pm Arizona time. Zac Gallen is getting the ball for the good guys and he will be opposed by right-hander Aaron Nola who is 4-9 with a 6.44 ERA on the year. With postseason chances on genuine life support, maybe we can all just relax and enjoy tomorrow’s game for what it is: one of our final chances to enjoy D-Backs baseball in 2025. Swing over to the GDT and take in some baseball in the regular season’s penultimate weekend with the ‘Pit.