I’m fairly convinced that baseball fans are a special breed. There aren’t that many sports fans that can watch their team lose in heartbreaking fashion and then show up less than 24 hours later to support the team. It’s just too bad those special fans weren’t rewarded with a better result or better play. Instead, they were treated to another tense, frustrating affair that ended with another one-run loss against a team that is functionally playing out the string of the season.
Merrill Kelly took the bump looking to bounce back from a shortened outing against the Rangers. Unfortunately, he looked like he needed another hour to warm up as the first two innings were a real slog. The first two runners of the game reached before he struckout the side in the first and he loaded the bases in the second inning on a double and a pair of walks. Heriberto Hernandez then grounded a ball sharply down the third base line that Nolan Arenado reached and then made a heroic attempt to throw Hernandez out that took Pavin Smith off the bag and allowed two runs to score. There’s certainly an argument to be made that Arenado could have held the ball, but there’s no other fielder I trust to make that judgement than Arenado who has been a revelation this season in the desert. The Marlins would tack on two more runs in the third when Jakob Marsee, who had an excellent series, launched a two-run shot into the right field bleachers to extend the Miami lead. Kelly would last into the fifth inning and collected a season-high nine strikeouts, but another short outing from their starting pitcher was one of the last things the team needed. Thankfully, the Arizona bullpen continues to shine with 4.1 scoreless innings from Ryne Nelson, Jonathan Loaisiga, and Dennis Santana to keep the team within striking distance.
Meanwhile, the Arizona offense continues to sputter. Yes, they scored three runs, but they were all solo home runs as the struggles with runners in scoring position. Tonight they were an inexcusable 0-for-6 in such situations and even when they loaded the bases with less than two outs in the home half of the first, Corbin Carroll couldn’t find a way to get the ball in play to even give the team the chance to score the runner from third. The team was particularly dependent on the home run ball in the series, scoring all but two of their 13 runs via the long ball. That’s not how the team is particularly constructed and it helps to explain why the offense was so mediocre.
It’s easy to point to the final play of the game with Jordan Lawlar’s unsuccessful attempted steal of second base as the reason the D-Backs lost this game, but there’s plenty of blame to go around for this loss. Kelly looked shaky early on and struggled to put hitters away at times which shortened his start, the top half of the lineup besides Moreno went a combined 2-for-15 with a couple walks, and the team failed to get a single hit with runners in scoring position. That last point is worth emphasizing again as it also includes an at-bat with a runner at third with less than two outs that wasn’t cashed in either. Yes, it’s frustrating that the attempted steal “took the bat out of Marte’s hands,” and it’s possible Lawlar scores from first on an extra-base hit anyway, but having a runner in scoring position is always preferable. And it took a near-perfect throw and tag from a rookie catcher in order to nab Lawlar. I’d prefer the team stick to its identity and roll the dice on something like that than rely on a home run or a double that could theoretically score Lawlar all the way from first base.
This was a particularly frustrating series to watch. It was against a team that has little more than pride left to play for on the road versus a team very much in the postseason hunt. And yet, the starting pitching for the D-Backs struggled to a 5.66 ERA and covered just 14.1 innings, forcing the bullpen to cover that much more of the game. Meanwhile, the offense scored just 13 runs, nearly all of them coming via home run as they went a pathetic 6-for-31 with runners in scoring position for the series. As a result, the team finds themselves going into their off day 3.5 games back of the Padres for the final Wild Card spot with just nine games to go. If they fail to make the playoffs, going 1-5 against a mediocre Marlins team on the season will be just one of many reasons. We can only hope that they have better things to think about instead.
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