The San Diego Padres split the series and evened the season series tonight at 5 wins a piece as the Padres bullpen really shut things down.
Kohl Drake was getting almost no swing and miss tonight as his stuff was simply not playing against this Padres lineup. Drake didn’t even have good command tonight as he pitched to a lot of 3 ball counts. Drake was only able to get through 3 2/3 innings tonight needing 80 pitches to do so as he was simply not effective. It honestly felt like he should’ve given up more than the 3 runs he gave up, but some good outfield defense which we will get to later bailed him out on some balls that were smashed.
Phillip Abner struggled over 3 innings, but atleast he was able to give this team 3 innings. Abner threw 52 pitches which Lovullo acknowledged in the post game was probably a little bit above what his limit likely was, however getting those extra outs definitely put this bullpen in a better position heading into the big weekend series against the Dodgers.
Ryan Waldschmidt who consistently has been getting replaced deep in games defensively had 2 phenomenal catches earlier in this game. Both of them crashing into the CF wall and traveling more than 80 feet to catch both. Maybe this will allow him to stay in games?
The Dbacks offense plated a run in the 3rd inning on an RBI single by the hottest catcher in baseball Gabi Moreno who would go on to record 3 hits on the night. The Dbacks were able to load the bases with 2 outs in the inning, but unfortunately Nolan Arenado flew out and the Dbacks offense was unable to score more runs. The red hot Tim Tawa would then single in the 4th inning, and that would be the last base hit for this offense until 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th. Pretty tough to win many games with that little of offensive production. Not much else to report on the offense however it is probably fair to note that the Padres bullpen has really carried this team, so maybe we just chock it up to that.
The Dbacks will now gear up for a weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers as they will look to Merrill Kelly to rebound in a big way from his last start. After the series split, the Dbacks will keep just a 1 game lead over the Padres for the final wild card spot as the Phillies won tonight. The Dbacks will square off against the Padres for 3 more games on the final 3 games of the season in San Diego to see who wins the season series, and potentially to decide who gets to go to the playoffs.
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