PHOENIX — The Arizona Diamondbacks have rearranged their starting pitching rotation to a degree as they exit the All-Star break and begin the post-All-Star schedule.
Brandon Pfaadt will start Friday’s series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals, which keeps him on line after Merrill Kelly pitched in Arizona’s final game of the first half last Sunday in Anaheim.
Ryne Nelson will move up a spot to follow, and Kelly will get Sunday’s finale.
That moves Kelly ahead of Zac Gallen, who will start Monday’s game against the Houston Astros. Eduardo Rodriguez drops back to round out the rotation.
Manager Torey Lovullo said these changes were based on upcoming matchups.
“We gotta chase down a few teams,” Lovullo said. “It’s not just the Cardinals, and they’re a good baseball team. We looked at the direct matchups right now. We looked at the matchups for Houston. We looked at it well beyond that and a lot of time was spent in this area. This is just how it lined up for us.”
The Cardinals have listed right-handers Andre Pallante (4.49 ERA), Sonny Gray (3.50 ERA) and Miles Mikolas (4.94 ERA) as their probable starters at Chase Field.
St. Louis sits 1.5 games back of the third National League Wild Card spot, while Arizona trails the Cardinals by four games.
The D-backs suffered a sweep at Busch Stadium earlier this season after entering the sixth inning of all three games either ahead or tied.
“ I think we kind of take an All-Star break as a reset,” Pfaadt said on Thursday. “We have the talent in this locker room to make a run and make those 5.5 games up. I think we can certainly do that with a good start this weekend.”
“ I think everybody had a chance to decompress, and we gotta turn up the volume here,” Lovullo added. “Anything’s possible. We can go back two years ago, we can go back last year, whatever it is, there’s plenty of examples of where we’ve been and how far we went. But we can’t play that game anymore. We gotta go out and take care of today.”
Pfaadt (5.16 ERA) is coming off his first career start of eight innings, as he allowed two earned runs against the San Diego Padres.
Nelson (3.68 ERA) and Kelly (3.34 ERA) have been Arizona’s most consistent two healthy starters this season, and Kelly in particular has been on a roll with 12 innings and two earned runs over his last couple outings. Moving Kelly up gives him six days of rest from his last start.
Diamondbacks-Cardinals pitching matchups
Friday: Brandon Pfaadt vs. Andre Pallante
Saturday: Ryne Nelson vs. Sonny Gray
Sunday: Merrill Kelly vs. Miles Mikolas
