{"id":658201,"date":"2026-04-02T06:04:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658201\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:04:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:04:49","slug":"diamondbacks-1-tigers-0-no-foolin-sweep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/658201\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks 1, Tigers 0: No Foolin\u2019 Sweep"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s always a worry that a team will come out flat the day after an emotional victory like last night\u2019s come-from-behind<\/a> win. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to have a strong performance from your starting pitcher – particularly with this team\u2019s bullpen – and Zac Gallen delivered exactly what the team needed. Unfortunately, he was lined up against the two-time Cy Young winner in Tarik Skubal who continues to show why he\u2019s one of the best starters in the game right now. It\u2019s rare that Opening Day starters square off outside of what should be a national holiday, but that was the case today across<\/a> the league. And we were treated to a taut, well-played, defensive and pitching masterclass that the D-Backs narrowly took.<\/p>\n

Thankfully though, Skubal wasn\u2019t perfect. One of the few mistakes he made all afternoon opened – and closed – the scoring when Corbin Carroll launched a fastball above the zone that just snuck over the centerfield fence to give the D-Backs a 1-0 lead in the very first inning. The D-Backs created plenty of traffic throughout the game – there were only two innings where they didn\u2019t have at least one baserunner – but they failed to capitalize on any of them. Instead, Skubal did what any starting pitcher would like to do: he induced weak contact and allowed his defense to work behind him by dialing up three separate double plays that extinguished rallies before they even started.<\/p>\n

For his part, Gallen was up to the pitching duel, matching Skubal\u2019s scoreless innings step for step. He leaned a little more heavily on his knuckle curve over his slider to great effect, collecting a pair of whiffs on the pitch. But even better, Gallen also leaned on his defense – far from a team strength the last two years – as he had just two strikeouts across his six innings. In fact, there were only eight strikeouts total from each team, landing in the lower-third of strikeout totals for games so far this season<\/a>. Instead, there were defensive gems on both sides that kept the offense off the board. Crucially, Gallen ended his outing with an incredible show of athleticism and quick thinking. With the tying run at third after a one out triple from Kevin McGonigle, Gleyber Torres smacked a ball ticketed for right field that Jose Fernandez snagged out of the air and immediately threw to third to double up McGonigle and end the inning. It was a heads up play that you can\u2019t always expect from a player who\u2019s in his second career big league game, but Fernandez has already shown a level head for big moments and demonstrated it again today.<\/p>\n

In classic baseball fashion, after a deflating sweep at the hand of the hated Dodgers to open the season, the D-Backs returned home to sweep the AL Central favorites with a dynamic offense, excellent defense, and just enough pitching to make it all hold up. It\u2019s easy to live and die with the results of each game and I\u2019m certainly prone to that kind of vacillating feeling throughout the season, but it\u2019s always worth remembering to take a deep breath and remind yourself that it\u2019s a long season and your confidence can change drastically on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s always a worry that a team will come out flat the day after an emotional victory like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,83286,4314,5,38,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-658201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-diamondbacks","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks-game-information","11":"tag-arizonadiamondbacks","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-diamondbacks","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116333608101768091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}