Well, you know what they say: “You can’t win ’em all.” On paper, it looked like maybe we should have won this one, and if you were keeping score, it would not have been lost at you that we basically won eight out of the nine innings that were played tonight. Sadly, however, that’s not how baseball works. Early in the season, before his forced vacation in Reno, we became very familiar with Brandon Pfaadt, tonight’s starter, pitching at least okay for a handful of innings and then having there be the One Big Inning™ where everything kinda blew up. Upon Brandon’s return, we still saw some of that, except that the offending innings were generally pretty mild—one or two or three runs at most, which kept things close enough that we could get back into it. But that was not the case tonight.
He was going up against former first-round draft pick and general underperformer Kumar Rocker, and in terms of the numbers, it was a very favorable matchup. Rocker is often wild, and throws a bunch of pitches, and gives up a lot of walks, and leaves ballgames a lot earlier than you tend to want your starter to leave. Irritatingly, though, he was quite efficient in the early going tonight, as he and Pfaadt traded quick, scoreless innings in the first and second. After two innings, Rocker had thrown 24 pitches; Pfaadt, despite having given up two hits to Rocker’s none, had only thrown 23. Pfaadt had another shutdown inning in the top of the third, adding only 12 more pitches to his count and setting down the Rangers in order, and Tim Tawa led off the bottom of the third with a triple off the wall in pretty much straightaway center field:
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Pavin Smith, who was for many of us a surprise call-up from Reno today, then grounded a single past Corey Seager and into left field to drive in Timmy. Three quick outs followed, but we’d drawn first blood against Rocker and that Rangers. 1-0 DBACKS
Pfaadt recorded another 1-2-3 inning in the top of the fourth, we sat down in order against Rocker in the bottom half, and then the fifth inning rolled around, much like a giant stone boulder bearing down a steep slope in a narrow passageway, heading straight for our guy. And alas, Brandon Pfgaadt was no Indiana Jones; he couldn’t get out of the way.
It started with a leadoff dinger by Wyatt Langford to tie the game, and was followed by a single, a stoledn abse, a sacrifice bunt, another single that scored a run, a hit by pitch. and then a fielder’s choice that looked like an inning-ending double play but which was overturned by a review that determined that Brandon Pfaadt’s foot was perhaps not on the bag when he ran over to cover first base. The call on the field was “safe,” and while the replays we saw on the broadcast really looked like they’d be enough to overturn that call, but it was not to be, and the call stood. That completely knocked Pfaadt off kilter, and the next three batters went single-double-single before he finally struck out Wyatt Langford, the tenth batter of the inning, to put it to bed. 6-1 Texas
And that was pretty much that. Somewhat surprisingly, Pfaadt came out and pitched the sixth, and he even recorded the first two outs in the seventh, and it was all good and all zeros, but the damage had been done.
Kumar Rocker, meanwhile, walked Nolan Arenado and Tim Tawa to lead off the bottom of the fifth, and that ended his night, and Texas got their bullpen involved and that bullpen also proved to be irritatingly effective. Both of the leadoff walks were left stranded. Rangers’ opening day starter Nathan Eovaldi, fresh off the IL and returning to big league action without any rehab starts or anything, let us get a second run in the bottom of the sixth, thanks to one-out singles by Gabriel Moreno and Geraldo Perdomo, followed by a Corbin Carroll sacrifice fly that scored Moreno from third, which narrowed the game to 6-2 Texas
But that was where it stayed. Jonathan Loaisiga, Derek Law, and Juan Morillo put zeroes up the rest of the way for us, but there was nothing further doing from the offense, despite us putting the leadoff runners on in both the seventh and eighth innings. And so it was. 6-2 Texas FINAL
Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs
The Lost Ark: Nobody.
The Last Crusade: Tim Tawa (3 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 1 3B, 1 BB, +10% WPA)
The Crystal Skull: Brandon Pfaadt (6 2/3 IP, 10 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 1 HR, -34% WPA)
It was a fairly sparse Gameday Thread this evening, with 201 comments at time of writing. Precious few recs got handed out tonight as well, and pretty much the only comments to go Sedona Red were concentrated at the start of the game, when folks were still marveling at the return of Pavin Smith to a major league roster and a starting lineup. As such, tonight’s Comment of the Game goes to onedotfive, for this solid suggestion about how we might find a way to turn his presence to our collective advantage in the remaining days of the season:
Works for me….I think Baxter is creepy anyway.
So join us tomorrow afternoon for the rubber match of the series. Hologram Eddie takes the mound for us; Cal Quantrill goes for Texas. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time. Hope to see you around the place!
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!
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