The Arizona Diamondbacks have a superstar. Ketel Marte is fantastic, as he showcased with the satellite he launched into orbit on his home run, but Corbin Carroll is a true superstar. Apple TV’s broadcast put Carroll in the center of the show tonight with the pregame promos and in-game interviews, and Carroll didn’t disappoint. Corbin finished the day a home run short of the cycle (or an inch short of being a double short of the cycle IYKYK), was on base 4 times, and made a great catch on defense.
To top it all off, he’s the most humble and team-first man on the diamond. When asked about Ketel Marte, he gushes over how talented a player he is. When asked about Torey as he records the final out in the inning, he doesn’t give a short, robotic answer to send the interviewers away. Instead he gives several sentences on his Skipper’s importance to him and the club before letting the overlords cut to commercial. Finally, when asked about himself and how much winning a Gold Glove would mean to him, he says it would mean a lot to Dave McKay for all the work that he put into Corbin. Corbin Carroll is a man every single person who is a fan of this organization can be proud of and it’s rare to have a player like that.
Now, stepping off my soap box, there was a game played tonight that the Diamondbacks didn’t always look like they were going to win. In fact, it looked like it might be one of those games where it just wasn’t their night. Michael Soroka left after 1 inning due to “posterior left hip discomfort”, whatever that may be. Then the Diamondbacks allowed 2 runs on rather freak plays: an error by Arenado (gasp!) and an inning-ending double play turned into RBI single thanks to the ball hitting second base and using it as a launch pad (d’oh!). After all that, the Serpientes found themselves in a familiar place: behind their opponent.
As they have all season now, though, the Snakes held tough and battled back. The bullpen was heroic, cobbling together 8 innings of about as good a ball as you can pitch besides the Stinkel appearance. No one really looked to have their A-game, but each man limited damage to little or nil (did you know the World Cup was happening?) and the defense did their job. The offense, for it’s part, took advantage of some shoddy Twins defense to get ahead. Still, it was Marte’s solo homer that was the difference in the game going into the bottom of the 8th, but the Snakes loaded the bases for Corbin and let him do the rest. Corbin tripled home 3 runs to give Sewald some breathing room in the 9th. Carroll is now 5/6 with the bases loaded this year and has 15 RBI! Only Luis Garcia Jr of the Nationals has more RBI with the bases loaded than Carroll and he’s had twice the ABs in those situations!
Great team win tonight. We took advantage of a less talented and struggling team tonight when several things just didn’t go our way. We’ll need to keep stacking those this weekend before we run the gauntlet heading into the All-Star break. Oh, that reminds me: go vote for Corbin!
Win Probability and Box Score
The GameDay Thread was a little lighter than typical Friday night games, especially a Friday night win, but I suspect the AppleTV broadcast had at least something to do with that. The game reached a final tally of 187 comments at time of publishing. COTG tonight goes to Webb Gemz for his note on the Twins defense:
The Diamondbacks face the Twins for the second game of this 3-game set tomorrow evening with a 7:10pm first pitch Arizona time. Righthander Taj Bradley (5-3, 4.14 ERA) will take the mound for the Twin Cities and Zac Gallen (3-5, 5.35 ERA) takes the ball for the good guys. Gallen needs to soak up some innings tomorrow to give the bullpen a chance after they covered for Soroka’s injury today. I’m not sure that’s a great thing.