Arizona Diamondbacks ultimate fan explains his love for the team
Arizona Diamondbacks fan who came from New York explains how his love for baseball led him to being a huge DBacks supporter and season ticket holder.
The Diamondbacks have been blurring the line between implausible and impossible for the last two months.
So, it should be no big deal for them to stretch the limits of credulity for one more weekend as they try to fang their way into the 2025 postseason after an 8-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sept. 25 at Chase Field.
Right?
“This was not a great day for us,” manager Torey Lovullo said immediately after the game. “We just never got anything going offensively. You’ve got to give (LA pitcher Yoshinobu) Yamamoto some credit.”
The DBacks had a doozy of a time in the finale of a three-game series against the Dodgers.
L.A. started Yamamoto, a Cy Young candidate whose WHIP is so good Indiana Jones is jealous.
(Sorry for using the fancy stat “walks and hits per innings pitched.” But it’s a good measure of how well a guy is throwing the ball, and I love Harrison Ford movies. Yamamoto also has 200 strikeouts this year, if you prefer more traditional numbers, as I usually do.)
Arizona had to counter with a “let’s hope the sum is better than the parts” approach of having Jalen Beeks throw the first inning, bringing in Nabil Crismatt for a bit and then praying for Austin Pope, who made his big-league debut against a lineup with Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
The home finale had nearly 35,000 people in attendance, pushing the season total to nearly 2.4 million. It marked a second consecutive year of at least 2.3 million fans and was the highest tally since 2008.
The Diamondbacks finished with a 43-38 home record, despite all the injuries and trades that have marred the season.
To play here again this year, Arizona is going to have to make the playoffs, and that’s not going to be easy.
The DBacks, Reds and Mets are playing musical chairs for the final National League wild-card spot.
Arizona has three games left, all at San Diego. The Padres are solidly in the postseason and will most likely face the Cubs. But San Diego and Chicago are close in the standings and need to win to secure home-field advantage in a best-of-three game series.
Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll shares his thoughts on loss vs. Dodgers
The Arizona Diamondbacks lost, 5-4, in 11 innings to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a game that could have moved them into playoff position.
Mathematically, the Diamondbacks don’t need to sweep the Padres, but if they want more than a fraction of a chance to get in, that’s what it’s going to take.
“The Padres are a good team,” Lovullo said. “I could sit here and tell you we’ve got to go out and sweep ’em: We do. That’s the mindset. We’ve got to win every game we can. We’ve got three left.”
The Mets have three on the road against the Marlins, who have a chance to make the playoffs in the way that Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas have a chance to join the real Miami Vice Squad.
The Reds have three games left at Milwaukee. The Brewers are playing to hold off the Phillies for the No. 1 seed in the National League.
If the DBacks, Reds and Mets finish with identical records, Arizona loses a tiebreaker to Cincinnati but beats New York. (Instead of musical chairs, you could imagine it as a game of paper-rock-scissors, if that helps.)
“Talk about margin,” Lovullo said, “there is none. We’re right up against it. It’s as tight as it possibly can be.”
The Diamondbacks have played their best when the odds against them are the longest, so maybe they’ve got a little more rattle in their tails.
But it sure seemed like the 11-inning loss to the Dodgers on Sept. 24 took the last bit of venom out of them.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” Lovullo said. “I can’t imagine anybody around me slept good. But that’s part of it … you’ve got to find a way to get it done.”
Bottom line: The Diamondbacks are down, but they aren’t out.
And they’re in playoff contention heading into the last weekend of the season, something no one would have predicted at the trade deadline.
Still, they’re not satisfied.
They’re looking to blur the line between implausible and impossible one more time.
“We backed ourselves into a corner,” Louvllo said. “We know where we stand. Now, we’ve got to go fight our way out of that corner.”
Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @SayingMoore, Instagram, @SayingMoore, and TikTok, @SayingMoore.
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